Birth of the Alliance (25 page)

Adam’s breathing was even more labored now. He looked as though he was trying to mouth the words, but was struggling to gather sufficient air and strength to utter even a single name.

Will leaned his ear down near Adam’s face. “Who, Adam? Who do you want me to protect?”

Adam inhaled the last breath of air his lungs would ever breathe, and as his last gasp exited him, he projected his final words to Will.

“My son.”

XV

Mourning

1941 A.D.

Hope returned fifteen minutes later. A faint smile covered her face, signifying that she’d been successful in completing her mission. Will's great grandfather would live to continue the line leading to Will.

But the smile was short-lived. Her face fell as she saw Will kneeling next to Adam’s lifeless body. Will finally reached up to close Adam’s eyes. He felt as if he was closing the door on his future. Adam was the key, the lynchpin to the entire complex plan to make sure that he and Hope could be together those few short years, could bring their children into the world, could ensure that Will escaped the clutches of the Hunters to return to the distant past and continue the cycle of living just as before.

And now Adam was gone.

They’d failed.

Adam wouldn’t be there with his children in the time machine, wouldn’t teach him the basics of Energy usage, wouldn’t be the voice of calm reason against Fil’s feigned anger at Will’s very existence. He simply wouldn’t
be
. The cycle of time had changed, and the future he knew from memory was now uncertain.

Hope put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s… sort of a war zone here, Will. We need to get him—and ourselves—out of here.”

Will looked up, his human senses only just registering the chaos around him. It was the brief calm before the second storm. Battleships were ablaze and sinking in the distance, making the damage to the nearby
Pennsylvania
seem all the more minor, though in some ways she’d claimed her sixteenth fatality after all. Though the sounds of the Japanese fighter planes had faded, Will knew another attack wave was only moments away, preparing to finish anything the first wave failed to accomplish. He didn’t trust himself to speak, but he did manage a brief nod. He glanced around, though he knew none of the pilots or sailors would notice them, and touched Adam’s body before teleporting both of them back to the submarine. Hope appeared beside him an instant later.

“How can he be gone?” Will screamed to no one in particular. He didn’t expect an answer, yet the silence that greeted his question was like the piercing swords that had ended the life of the man lying dead on the floor before him.

Hope finally broke the silence. “I don’t know, Will. I do know this, though. We have almost ninety years to get a plan in place for the Hunters and Assassin. Someone else will help us. The Cavern is full of people who will—”

“No,” Will said, his voice laced with more anger than intended, and he shook his head. “Adam is dead because he tried to help us. How many others will die? We need to handle this alone.”

“We
can't,
Will.” Her tone was simple, sad, one that begged him to keep fighting. “You’ve said it yourself. History says you may not be around after 1995. I may not be around after the children reach adulthood. We need to entrust others with the truth about your past and our future, and the need to complete and carry out the plan Adam was creating. We still have to figure out the cure. We have to make sure that history—”

“But history—future history—has changed.” Will’s voice was quiet, and he spoke through clenched teeth. “Whatever history told us no longer matters. Adam was the one to do all of that. He was there in the distant future and he was there to rescue me in 2030. He
can't
be there now. He's
dead
, Hope.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t bother to try to adapt, Will.” Her eyes were blazing, challenging him, daring him to quit, to use this setback as the excuse to walk away from nine centuries of trials and tribulations.

Will stood up. He began to pace around the cabin, hoping the movement would present the answers to his dilemma. After a few moments, he stopped and looked at Hope.

“I don’t know how this can be fixed,” he said, his voice soft but fraught with emotion. “But I can promise you this: I won’t quit until I’m as dead as Adam.”

Hope slapped him gently on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit! But no morbid talk, mister. We’re both going to live a
very
long time—”

“Um…” Will’s eyes twinkled. “I turned 958 earlier this year. What, exactly, would you classify as living a long time?”

She snorted. “We’re both going to live
even longer
than we already have. Better?”

“Very specific answer there.”

She smacked his arm again. “And not only that, we’re going to find the cure, our children will be born, and everything will work out just fine. We simply need to find someone
else
we can trust, someone powerful enough to handle anything that might happen, and bring them aboard. They’ll be our new Adam.”

Will, who had started to pace again during Hope’s speech—while playfully rubbing his arm in mock pain—suddenly stopped. “Eva.”

“What?” Hope was startled. “What makes you bring her name up? Have you… seen her?”

Will shook his head. “No. Not recently… not in the past nine hundred years or so. You’ve seen her more recently than I. No, I mentioned her name because of something Adam said, just before… well, before he… you know.” His face registered the raw pain and emotion once more, but he continued on. “He said that I needed to find Eva and that she was still alive. I guess he found her, which is strange, because after his attack on the original North Village I got the impression she was avoiding him.”

Hope frowned. “I did as well; she made it clear that it was best for both of us if we stayed away from him. But obviously I’ve not talked to her since I went off on my own, even though I’ve looked for her. I don’t know where she’s been hiding, but it’s a great hiding spot.”

“Adam seemed to have made the decision to stay away as well,” Will said, remembering their conversations. “He badgered me for months, demanding to know where you and Eva were, and then one day, very suddenly, he seemed to realize something… and he stopped asking. It was as if some major understanding came over him and whatever that understanding was, it caused him to stop asking where the two of you were.”

Hope frowned. “That makes no sense. I guess the only thing we can say is that, whatever their respective reasons for staying away from each other, at some point they made contact, and neither of us was aware of it. So the question is why would Adam tell us to find her?”

“Well, at a minimum, she’d want to know that he’s… no longer with us.” Will looked at the ground so Hope couldn’t see the tear dripping down his face, though he knew full well she knew that tear had fallen.

“That's true,” she said, frowning. “I suppose we should honor his last wishes, locate Eva, and let her know the news.”

“We need to return him to the Cavern first,” Will said. “It’s the appropriate place for him to be… laid to rest.” Will looked at the ground again, trying to avoid looking at the lifeless body nearby. “He lived with the Aliomenti, but his heart and home both resided with the Alliance. That’s what he’d want.”

Hope nodded her agreement. In reality, they had no other option for burial, save for a burial at sea. Neither of them would consider that option with any degree of seriousness. Will ordered the
Nautilus
to carry them to the Cavern. They spent the next two days generating sufficient ice to preserve the body as best they could inside a large wooden box Will had aboard from his last transport trip from Eden. This time, they would not come bearing treasure in that box, but tragedy.

They arrived at the entry tunnel to the Cavern several days later, parking the
Nautilus
at an empty berth of the underwater dock encircling the tunnel opening. After teleporting Adam aboard one of the shuttle pods, they spent the short ride to the Cavern in silence, reminiscing about fond memories of Adam, each wondering what they might have done differently to prevent the tragedy.

The pod came to rest near the beach, and the two of them teleported to the designated entry point for the pod, bringing with them the simple pine box holding Adam’s body. Passers-by waved cheerful greetings at the two of them, but paused at the looks of sadness and shock on the faces of Will and the Shadow.

It was only after seeing those looks that they realized what—and more importantly,
who
—was in the box beside them.

Death was an uncommon sight in this community. A small percentage opted out of the ambrosia, preferring to live mortal lives, but with the quality of nutrition and advances in medical science the Alliance had made, all still lived ninety years or more before succumbing. The immortals traveling outside would on rare occasions be caught by the Hunters and die in the ensuring battle. In those instances, the bodies would never be retrieved, for the Hunters would take the victims back to Aliomenti Headquarters as a warning to anyone thinking of defection.

The sight of Adam, still bearing the appearance of one in his early forties, widely known to be over nine hundred years old, was a tremendous shock. The gasps of those nearby were quickly repeated throughout the Cavern, and within moments the message went viral through the underground city of telepaths. The beach was soon crowded as the current population gathered around the beach, all asking the same question.

How had this happened?

“Adam did his job well,” Will told those assembled. “He built their confidence, argued for courses of action that were to our benefit, and brought us information available only to those operating at the very highest levels of the Aliomenti hierarchy. Such a course of action was filled with danger. If he ever slipped, ever thought of the benefits to us from his actions, his very life would be at risk. To the very end, he never betrayed his efforts on our behalf—until he threw himself in front of a sword meant for another, sacrificing his own life to save that of another.” He paused, looking at the ground, waiting for some of the fresh new emotion to pass, well aware that there were hundreds of moist faces nearby despite the moderate temperature inside the Cavern. He looked back up at those assembled, all standing in respectful silence. “Such sacrifice isn’t something the Aliomenti can understand. They live for themselves, for the moment. Adam, like each of us, understood that there are greater purposes and a higher good than simple temporary pleasures. When he saw that greater good threatened, he acted without hesitation. There are some changes we
don’t
want to see in the world, and it’s just as important to prevent those changes as it is to generate the positive changes we’ve all focused on. Adam understood that.” He paused and took a deep breath, choking back the emotion. “For that, he will have my eternal gratitude, admiration, and thanks. And I vow to you, Adam, that your sacrifice will not be in vain. We will one day see the scourge of the Aliomenti—their arrogance, their elitism—gone.”

He watched their faces. Faces filled with determination, with anger, with eagerness to do something. He could almost taste the eagerness in each of them, ready to do something to answer the travesty the Aliomenti had unleashed on them. Will had never specifically said that the Aliomenti had killed Adam, but they’d inferred the truth. If he gave the word at that moment to take to the flying craft and submarines for an invasion of Aliomenti Headquarters, they’d leave immediately. He could hear the gentle gurgling of the water in the artificial rivers feeding into the tunnel, surprised that so large a crowd could make so little noise.

There were at least ten thousand Aliomenti operating under Arthur’s heavy hand, most worked in plain sight as upper management in the hundreds of banks and other businesses the Aliomenti controlled. Only around one thousand worked at any given time on the island housing their Headquarters. That Headquarters served as the primary home for Arthur, and the Hunters and Assassin called it home between missions. The Alliance had perhaps two thousand, and many of those were operating in the field, all with access to either invisible flying craft or submarines. They’d be able to mass the entire Alliance population—including the fifty Alliance “babies” possessed of a level of Energy power even Will and Hope struggled to match—and assault the Headquarters before the overwhelming numbers of the Aliomenti could return for a defense.

It was a strategy that would work.

They could annihilate Aliomenti Headquarters with minimal loss of their own numbers and, just as important, minimal loss of life for the human population.

Arthur, the Hunters, and The Assassin would be gone.

Without Arthur, the remaining Aliomenti might well join them, and with triple their current numbers, they could well usher in a golden age for all humanity.

And yet it would also mean altering history. No future meeting of his younger self and Hope, no births of Josh and Angel. He’d never be sent back in time. Hope would die at the hands of Arthur’s gang before ever changing her name. The entirety of the Aliomenti movement might well vanish before Adam arrived in the North Village with the morange berries, before any of them mixed the Energy skills with the immortality of the ambrosia.