Will accepted the pair of glasses, and breathed a sigh of relief as the world snapped back into focus. He winced at the effort. “Thank you. I don’t think I can move well just yet. Are you a doctor? Is this a hospital room? And how is it that you just walked through that wall?”
She looked puzzled, and then nodded. “Of course, that would be something different for you. Let me answer your first two questions. I’m not a doctor, and this is not a hospital. But this is where you will recover from the wounds you suffered at the hands of the three Hunters. Not many human men—“
“Wait,” he interrupted. “What are Hunters? And why did you refer to me as a human man? Isn’t that redundant? Those men, the ones who did this to me, they kept referring to my wife as human, but acted like I wasn’t. They said it like I knew what they meant.” He took a deep breath. “I have no idea what they meant, or why they did what they did.” He looked at her, and could read the sympathy on her face.
“I know you don’t,” she said. “I’ll just say that they believed what they said to be true, and with that being the case, they acted according to the rules and laws of their organization.” She frowned. “They acted on them despite the fact that those rules are wrong.”
He frowned, and wished he hadn’t. His face was still sore. “What about my other questions? The wall, the Hunters, the human this and that...?”
She smiled. “Mr. Stark, you have found yourself at the crossroads of a great battle you had never been aware of until you arrived home and discovered that your family was in danger. There is much you need to learn, and you will have all the time you require in order to do so. But first, you must regain your health.”
He shook his head, ignoring the pain. “I can’t. I need to go after those men. I cannot sit back and let them walk free after what they’ve done. If you can help me to heal, I would certainly appreciate your assistance, and I can pay you. I need to get out of here. I need to go after those men. I can’t let them...I can’t let them do to someone else what they’ve done to my family.”
The man with the wraparound mirrored sunglasses entered the room as Will finished speaking. Angel continued as if unaware he’d joined them. “Mr. Stark, I appreciate your passion and love for your family, but if you walk out of this room and try to go after those men, you will be captured and jailed and likely killed by them before the day is out. You must regain your health, and you must learn why it is that they came for you and your family. Do not throw your life away in a rash attempt at bravado.”
Though he hated to admit it, he knew she was right. He needed to heal up. But that didn’t mean it needed to be here. “I appreciate your advice, and I agree that I need to recover. I’d prefer to do that with my own doctor, where I can start my own hunt for these men. I’m happy to pay whatever you ask for the care you’ve provided and the rescue...wait, how did you get me away from them?”
The man, called Fil as Will remembered, spoke up. “Mr. Stark, I will be blunt. The world believes you to be dead, killed in the fire that took the lives of your wife and child. If you suddenly reappear, the world that believes you are a great hero will suddenly become suspicious, that perhaps you survived because you orchestrated the entire event. You would also advertise...”
“Now wait just one moment!” Will snapped. “How dare you suggest I had anything to do with what happened! I’d give my life right this second to give either of them a chance to live, and...”
Fil raised his hand, and Will noticed a strange, golden symbol tattooed on his palm. “Mr. Stark, I’m aware of your true and noble sentiments in that regard. The reality, though, is that public opinion is easily swayed, and usually in the manner that would see a shining star fall. People cheered you as you rose to great heights, but they will cheer louder as you fall. You are best served remaining with us, and getting your revenge from the shadows. The attacks those men perpetrated were so successful because of the element of surprise. What better element of surprise than the attack from one believed dead?”
Will opened his mouth to protest, then realized the man was correct. “Then I am dead, and I have no means of repaying you. I will work—“
“Mr. Stark, we have no need of money,” Fil replied. “As for working, you are in no condition to do so. Your job at present is to heal, and to listen, and to learn. I ask only that you keep an open mind. What you hear will seem impossible, and you may think us liars in telling you what we do.”
“I’ve just watched two people walk through walls,” Will replied. “Unless my battered memory is wrong, three men tried to stab me and failed. I was pulled into and through the ground in my backyard. I don’t believe any of that is possible. Yet I saw and experienced all of those things. I don’t have much choice but to have an open mind.”
Angel smiled. “A very practical philosophy, Mr. Stark.”
“Please, call me Will.”
“I feel more comfortable calling you Mr. Stark. Is that acceptable?”
Will shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
The woman continued. “I also ask you for your patience as we move forward. You may want answers to questions, and find that we will not provide them immediately. This is not because we wish to keep you ignorant of the answers, but because some questions need more context before answering. Deal?”
Will nodded. “Deal.”
“Mr. Stark, what we tell you will be told to you in confidence. In time, once you understand everything, you will have the opportunity to use those lessons to help others. Many, many others. But we must have your assurance, your oath, that you will not share what you do not fully understand, but not hoard forever for yourself what you do understand and believe could benefit others. Do I have your word?”
“I’m not sure I understand what you mean. I’d rather not involve myself in an oath...wait a minute.” He frowned. “The men who attacked me, the Hunters, they said I’d broken an Oath or Oaths. What was that about? Is that what I’m doing now? Making an Oath that will make people kill me, or people that I care about?”
“The Oaths they spoke of fall into the ‘be patient now’ category,” Angel replied. “We will explain them in due course, and how they came to be, but there are other lessons and goals to reach first. The Oath I am asking you to make is different. Think of it as the core Oath, if you will. Here’s a simple analogy to explain what this core Oath means. Suppose that you were the first person to discover fire. Perhaps you were walking around after a thunderstorm one day, and you found a burning branch. If you were to pick up that branch and run into your village, and then into someone’s home made of dried sticks, would that be helpful to them?”
Will frowned. “I suppose yes, it could be, but they’d be at risk, too.”
“Why?”
“Because that burning branch might catch their house on fire.” He winced, as the memory of his own house on fire, and what it meant, was still fresh in his mind.
“Exactly. Though you may have the best of intentions, it would eventually cause them great harm. Yet after some period of time when you truly understood fire — how to create it as needed, how to control where it burned, and so on — denying that knowledge to those in your village and hoarding it for yourself would be a selfish thing to do. I wouldn’t do that, and I doubt you’d do that either. Rather, you’d share it so that others could stay warm, and cook food, and protect themselves from the wild.”
Will waited for more, but Angel remained silent, simply watching him. “That’s it? Teach people about fire, once I understand it well enough? Don’t keep it to myself?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s the Oath I was attacked over?”
“There are four Oaths that those who attacked you are concerned with. This is not one of those four, and in fact I doubt those who attacked you even know about this one. This is the Oath at the heart of our group; it sums up our philosophy and the distinctions between our group and theirs.”
Angel paused, noted Will’s look of understanding, and resumed
. “To continue the analogy used before, we are a small portion of the population of the world, and our group is the only one that has figured out how to manipulate flames. The philosophical question for you, Mr. Stark, is this: do you wish to be the part of the group that wants to keep that knowledge here? Or do you wish to be the part of the group that gradually educates the rest of the world about fire and its safe usage?”
He smiled. “Call me Prometheus. Fire for everyone. I’ll abide by that Oath.”
“You swear it?”
“I do.”
Fil nodded at Angel, and then turned and left the room, vanishing through the wall.
“Seriously, how are you doing that?” Will asked, his curiosity piqued despite his pain. “Is the wall an illusion?”
Angel laughed. “No, it’s not an illusion. It will be explained to you. But right now...”
“Right, right, focus on getting healthy, I know.” He sighed. “I just wish I could set it all right. Make it so that none of it ever happened.”
“We can’t change the past, Mr. Stark,” Angel said. She rested a comforting hand on his shoulder. “If your roles had reversed, and it was Mrs. Stark here with me right now instead, what would you want to tell her? What would you want her to do?”
“I’d want her to be happy,” Will said, without hesitation. “No more and no less. In whatever form that would take.”
“Your wife loved you as you love her,” Angel said, her voice quiet. “Perhaps she would want the same for you.”
He considered that, and nodded. “I know,” he said, with a deep sigh. “When I woke up, outside the pain and the sadness, the most overwhelming emotion was rage. I wanted to do nothing but track those men down and kill them, make them suffer. But I realize that’s not going to make me happy, or bring my family back. There’s a larger picture, though, and that’s to make sure that others don’t suffer the same fate that Hope and Josh suffered, and that other survivors don’t have the type of emotional pain that I have. What I need to do is focus myself on anything that will stop those men from acting again. If that’s through working with you and the others here, then that’s what I need to do.”
Angel smiled. “Well said, Prometheus. As I said earlier, we could have given you something to heal all of your physical wounds, but wanted to be sure at first that you didn’t live in denial of what happened to you. You’ve passed that hurdle, and now we’ll give you the true healing you need.”
She pulled a vial out of her pocket and handed it to Will.
He accepted it, but couldn’t keep a smirk off his face. “This vial is going to heal me of all of my injuries? I’m pretty sure I’ve got a broken leg and two broken ribs—“
“Three, actually.”
“Three broken ribs. Lots of bruises. Burns of all degrees. And that vial is going to fix me?”
“And everything else you haven’t mentioned. Remember, you promised to have an open mind.” She chuckled. “Remember, I can walk through a wall. Why is it difficult to believe I can fix broken bones and bruises with some liquid?”
Will snorted, wincing at the sharp pain it produced in his broken ribs. “I can pretend the wall is a holographic illusion, rather than solid, while I’m lying on this table. My broken leg is much more tangible.” He sighed, and glanced at the vial. “But I did promise that I would keep an open mind.”
Angel nodded. “You’ll need to drink all of it. And it will make you sleep until you’re fully healed.”
Still skeptical, Will drank the contents, and handed the vial back to Angel. “Tastes like mint.”
“Peppermint, actually.”
A wave of fatigue hit him, and he began to drift. “Already getting sleepy,” he said, yawning. “See you in the morning.”
“Sleep well, Mr. Stark.” She walked through the wall as Will faded into a deep sleep.
Fil was waiting for her. “How are you holding up?”
“He’s not what I had expected, but I think I’m more heavily biased by the myth of the man than you are.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant. Can I just say that I’m in shock, and leave it at that? I hadn’t expected the injuries to be so extensive. He barely survived.”
“You’re still avoiding the real question.”
“Short answer: I don’t know. I’ll tell you when I figure it out.” She fixed him with a stare. “How are you holding up?”
“I’ll live.”
She snorted. “I see non-answers run in the family.”
He shrugged. “My memories are a bit more vivid than yours.”
“And that means...?”
“Like I said, I’ll live.”
She shrugged. “I guess we’ll discuss the impact of having him here when we figure out the answers.” Angel looked down at her feet.
Fil nodded. “Moving on...impressions of the man?”
“He’s passionate. He wants to go after the Hunters; that’s genuine. He’s managed to gain control of his emotions very well, but he still wants them stopped.” She looked up at Fil. “I have no idea if he’ll still want to do that once he understands what he’s truly up against. But I don’t sense anything that tells me we should alter our plan.”
“Agreed. I have no doubt he’ll be the most demanding Energy student we’ve had, because he’s incredibly motivated. And he’s incredibly calibrated for Energy work. Adam is going to hate him, because he’s going to want to train twenty-four hours a day, motivated by his sense of vengeance and his genuine talent.”
Angel chuckled. “Not until he’s done with the Purge. You do realize that he’ll want to kill us after the Purge is done, right?”
“If he lives through it,” Fil said. His face was grim. “That’s why we’ll teach him enough to kill us only after he’s survived it.”
XI
Trapped
The Assassin regained consciousness and found himself inside a coffin.
While he didn’t believe he was dead, inside a wooden box, and buried underground, it was difficult to prove that wasn’t the case. There was very minimal lighting within his confined space. He was lying on his back, and his head and feet were both touching the sides of whatever cell held him.
How had he gotten into this space?
He recapped the most recent events he could recall. He’d received a call from the Leader, which was always a good thing. Those calls meant he’d get to do his own form of Hunting, where he would rid the world of human scum. It was never a large group, however, just one or two at a time. The Assassin had never understood why the Aliomenti leadership would not let him go on mass cleansing missions, rather than just tag along on a small number of Hunts.
The Leadership team was terrified of being discovered by the humans. The ten thousand Aliomenti were outnumbered by eight billion humans, and though any skilled Aliomenti could easily hold their own against a large number of humans, the Leadership remained concerned that discovery would lead to their gradual and eventual elimination.
He thought the humans were worthless, and the Leadership thought they were a grave threat to their existence. He was able and willing to eliminate the threat. He’d proposed campaigns of annihilation in certain key areas of the human world, which he assured his Leadership would result in the humans exterminating themselves. It had happened in their history before, though they’d managed to avoid mass extinction. With his plan, they’d finally be rid of the human threat and could rebuild the world as they saw fit, no longer hiding in plain sight, free to be themselves at all times. His suggestions had always been rejected.
He waited, patiently, for the Leadership team to make the right decision.
In the meantime, he availed himself of the opulent lifestyle the Aliomenti enjoyed. Immense wealth. Resort communities humans were unable to visit. Amazing abilities he once would have considered impossible. He wondered how traitors like Will Stark could walk away from all of it, renounce what he was and what he’d sworn an Oath to uphold, and open
ly flout Aliomenti tradition. How could they leave a beautiful existence for the stupid, untalented human scum who would never even know of, or thank him for, his efforts? He hated Stark for being a traitor, and even more for being an idiot.
Thoughts of Stark brought back memories of the moments before he’d lost consciousness, before he’d woken up here inside of some enclosure. The Leader had called, and told him that the Hunters had found Will Stark. That, in itself, was unusual. Stark knew how the Hunters searched for him, and was skilled at eluding detection and capture. Rumors of their last encounter suggested that the Hunters believed Stark had managed to develop approaches to avoid ever being found again. Those rumors were apparently untrue.
The great joy of the call was the report that Stark had been shown to have violated Oath Number Three. Stark, married to a human woman? The Assassin’s hate morphed into something worse: pity. The man had clearly lost his sanity. He wouldn’t have believed it, but the Hunters didn’t make mistakes, and if they’d reported this fact, then he knew it to be true. Nor did he care if it was true or not. Accusations of marriage to a human meant the Assassin got to work, because the humans married to an Aliomenti were always sentenced to death. They assumed any human married to an Aliomenti would know, or come to know, of their existence, and thus their secrecy was at risk. Risks were eliminated.
He remembered creating the plan of attack with the Hunters. Stark’s house, where he lived with his wife, was heavily guarded. The Hunters’ job was to grab Stark, which was not an easy task. They could teleport into Stark’s house, grab him, and leave the wife to The Assassin, but their fear of Stark was real. They fully expected the man to defeat them and escape. They needed to destroy him mentally first. When they’d learned the traitor was also a married Oath-breaker, they not only found a reason to bring in The Assassin, they’d found the bait they needed to distract Stark and mentally unbalance the man. The Assassin would kill his wife in spectacular fashion. If Stark loved her, as husbands were supposed to love wives, he’d be so distraught he wouldn’t be able to fight back. And then the Hunters could bring him back to Headquarters to face the punishment the traitor so richly deserved.
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