Birth of the Alliance (28 page)

“He
does
seem a bit strange,” Dane muttered. “But, if what you say is true—and I’m not saying it is—how do I undo what they’ve done to me? I want to be able to make my own choices, and if I do what they command at least I’ll know I’m doing it because I agree to go along with their orders.”

Will nodded. Dane was proving to be a definite Alliance candidate. He valued his freedom, his ability to be of his own mind on critical decisions. “There’s a small chip inside you, about the size of your fingernail. That little chip transmits a signal that allows them to find you, much like Porthos can sense Energy. That chip
also
has two drugs inside it. One will knock you unconscious. One will kill you instantly.” Dane’s look of terror was genuine; he’d broken into a deep sweat, and Will could smell his fear. “We need to get that chip out of you first. Once that’s done, I can reverse the brain rewiring. You may not like me or trust me afterward, but at least you can know that your assessment is made without anything unnatural driving your decisions.”

Dane fixed Will with a shrewd look. “If you can fix all of that, how do I know you aren’t just going to change it so I do what
you
want me to do instead?”

“It’s wise to be skeptical,” Will said. “I could also be an agent of the Aliomenti sent to test your resolve, too.” Dane started to back away, but Will held up his hand. “You can scan me with your Energy and decide if I’m telling the truth. If you’re uncomfortable, I’ll leave right now. Just say the word and I'm gone.”

Dane watched him carefully, and Will stood still, waiting patiently. He knew Dane would be able to tell if Will was trying to influence him, and so he focused on one of the trees nearby. A few of the leaves had turned brown, possibly due to a lack of water. On instinct, Will released a trickle of Energy to the three, and the leaves started to regain their natural coloring.

After a moment, Dane nodded. “OK, I trust you. What do we do?”

“You need to stand still,” Will replied. “I need to get that chip out of you.”

Dane’s eyes widened. "You're going to do that now? Here?”

Will nodded. “If I take you someplace, they’ll be able to tell and track me with your chip. It’s best to handle it here. But you won’t feel a thing. And if you don’t want to go through with this, just say so and I’ll stop.”

Dane shook his head. “No, I trust you. It’s just… I guess I thought it would be… messier.” He closed his eyes, as if expecting to experience pain.

Will trickled a bit of Energy into Dane, using it to locate the chip inside the man’s body. The Aliomenti were risk takers; he found the chip implanted along Dane's spine, next to a major artery in his back. If they need to operate the remote sedative or poison, it would take little time for the substances to take effect.

“I found the chip. It’s in your back, next to your spine, right near the bottom of the ribcage. Do you still want me to take it out?”

Dane didn't respond.

Will released his focus on the chip and moved around to look at Dane’s face. “Are you okay with me taking the chip out?”

Dane’s eyes were wide open, as if he’d seen or experienced something terrifying. His hands went to his throat, signifying that he couldn’t breathe.

Will cursed. The Aliomenti had set the chip to detonate the enclosed poison if unknown Energy touched it in a prelude to teleporting the chip out of the body. It was a self-destruct mechanism the Alliance had never before encountered. The technology was new but effective. He needed to act quickly.

After moving the man to the ground, Will teleported the chip out of Dane’s body into his own pocket for later analysis. He used Energy to find the poison, and immediately started teleporting the substance from Dane’s body. He noticed Dane’s body relaxing out of the corner of his eye, but his focus remained on completing the job. The relaxation must mean that his body was recovering from the poison as the substance was removed.

With the last of the poison tracked and removed, Will turned to Dane to check his condition.

Dane’s eyes were wide and unseeing, and a quick check of his pulse revealed the awful truth.

Will stared at the young man. How was it possible? Will had accidentally triggered the poison, but he’d removed it before it should have had a chance to circulate far enough to cause death. Had the chip had triggered the poison even before he'd started his Energy surgery? If that was true, then the poison had operated longer than he’d realized. They’d need to examine the chip to figure out the truth. For Dane, though, it didn't matter. He was dead regardless of when the poisoning had started.

And Will had, unintentionally, been the one to trigger it.

His internal sense of alarm skyrocketed. If the chip had fired
before
Will had started the operation, before the Energy had triggered a response, it meant one of two things. The chips were sufficiently advanced to recognize when an Aliomenti had an extended conversation with a member of the Alliance. Or the Hunters and The Leader had known of Will’s interest in recruiting Dane and had triggered the poison long before it would otherwise be activated. Either way, it meant the same thing.

They knew he was here.

He pulled out the chip and dropped it on the ground. No sense letting them follow him through the GPS in Dane’s chip, or letting them trigger the sedative or any possible residual poison into him. They’d need to get a version of the newest chips another day.

Will threw up his Energy Shield, pulled the scutarium mask over his face, and triggered the button on his belt that activated the invisibility feature in his clothing. He wrapped his body with nanos and accelerated skyward. After hitting fifty feet in elevation, he stopped, rotated in the air toward the clearing, and watched.

Athos appeared a moment later, sword drawn, looking around for Will. He’d been correct: Dane was nothing but bait to lure him here. They’d captured a prime human target for recruitment, and set him loose upon the city, waiting for Will to take the bait. As soon as they’d heard Will’s voice, they’d triggered the poison and began travelling to the spot.

How many others were set out upon the world as nothing more than bait to capture him or other Alliance?

Will silently cursed himself as he watched Athos scour the area, looking for the missing Alliance leader. Dane had accepted his claims too easily. No Aliomenti programmed by Arthur for obedience would so readily agree to deprogramming. Will’s failure to notice that had caused a man's death. While his self-fury raged, Will let the nanos move him out over the English Channel, and let his mind go blank as the anger simmered. He knew that the anger was, in part, due to his string of failures. Adam’s death. The inability to find Eva. The long-lasting inability to find the cure to ambrosia.

An image flashed unbidden into his mind, an image from a long ago dream, a dream in which he’d realized that the inland valley lake on the island they’d named Atlantis had served as both stopper and drain for the excess waters that could flood that body of land. He remembered the platinum blond hair floating on the surface of the salty, inland lake.

Gasping at the realization, Will changed course and headed west, accelerating at top speed, his face and body protected from the brutal winds by a shield of nanos. It took just under twenty minutes to reach the rocky, inhospitable island of Atlantis.

Will landed next to the lake, grateful he'd not traveled here during a flood-inducing storm. The scent of salt and surf was overpowering here; the island regularly flooded with seawater that surged over the slight barriers the island brandished, onto the perimeter, before filling the deep valley comprising the interior. He walked to the lake, a body of water he’d thought of as nothing more than a means to get water to the elevated city they’d constructed here centuries earlier, a city they’d destroyed before moving on. Now he looked through the hazy, salty water to the depths of the lake with new understanding, and saw what he’d never noticed or comprehended before. The depths were formed of shards of rock that formed a jagged bottom floor of the lake, like three dimensional puzzle pieces. He squinted to better focus his eyes, and noticed that there were gaps between the rocks, which swayed as the lake moved with the inflow of new water from the inbound streams. He wondered where the water that trickled through those gaps went.

“There's an underwater river below, and the streams and lake above drop down to it. Rather amazing, is it not, Will?”

Will smiled at the sound of a voice he'd not heard for nine centuries, the voice of a tall, imposing woman with hair that looked nearly white.

He turned around and held his arms open. “It's good to see you again.”

Eva smiled, and moved forward to embrace him. “It is good to see you again as well, Will. And it is about time you got here. I was beginning to wonder if you would ever understand the messages I sent you.”

XVII

Secret

1969 A.D.

Will released Eva. “The dreams… those were from you?”

She nodded. “I apologize for the lack of direct communication.”

Will waved his hand, dismissing the concern. “I’m just sorry it took me so long to realize what it meant. I haven’t seen you in centuries, Eva. Where have you been?”

Eva sighed. “I fear the answer to that question is a very long story.”

Will chuckled. “As it turns out, I happen to have the time to listen to a long story today.”

Eva nodded. “Follow me, then, but stay close and do exactly what I do. We will travel to my home.” She nodded at the lake. “The salty water will sting your eyes for a few seconds, but it will pass quickly.”

She turned to the lake and dove in. Will dove in after her.

She was right: the salty water stung, and his eyes screamed in pain. He blinked quickly, and his eyes acclimated to the salty water. The water found minor cuts and abrasions in his skin, and the stinging sensation nearly caused him to shout in pain. Such a move would have resulted in him inhaling a lung full of water, and he managed to stop himself just in time.

Will watched as Eva moved to a pair of large rock shards at the bottom of the lake and she lifted the larger of the two as though it was a trapdoor. The opening it formed was sizable enough to admit large volumes of water—and adult humans. Eva disappeared into the gap, and the “door” fell back into the gap after her. Will swam over to repeat the process, lifting the rock “door” open and swimming into the darkness, wondering how much longer he’d need to hold his breath. His eyes had numbed to the effects of the salt, but still hurt, and he wanted nothing more than to get out of this water and clear them.

The water plunged downward, carrying him with it. His body passed through a substance that felt like gel, clearing away the salt and lake water debris coating his skin and clothing. He passed through the membrane and dropped a few more seconds before splashing into a stream. Instinctively, he stood up, and realized he was in an underground cavern, and the closing of the rock shard trapdoor had stopped the flow of water.

Will glanced up. He’d fallen roughly thirty feet since passing through the door, and landed in a stream about four feet deep. The gelatinous cleansing membrane had slowed his descent about halfway down, preventing the splash from being far more painful. He scrambled out of the water, breathing in the clean—if humid—air as he glanced around.

The stream flowed at the bottom of a tunnel about thirty feet in diameter, and Will realized that there must be some mechanism that opened the trapdoor when the island flooded. There were probably many of them, all dropping excess water down into this underground riverbed. He wondered where the tunnel led, but his first priority was locating Eva. He spotted her on the opposite side of the riverbed heading into a tunnel. He darted back into the stream, emerged on the opposite site, and entered the same tunnel. The path wound around for several hundred yards before it sloped sharply upward, and Will emerged into another underground cavern. The air here was much fresher and dryer than the air in the underground riverbed, and Will took a few deep breaths as Eva watched him.

“Are we under one of the hills?” he asked.

Eva nodded. “To be precise, we are presently under the hills at the north side of the island. I found these caves the first time I traveled here, shortly after the Aliomenti chose to leave. It was a perfect home for me. The Aliomenti were unlikely to return to a place they had abandoned, especially after going to the trouble to destroy the city they built.” Her face clouded. “It was also a place I knew Hope was unlikely to visit, and for both reasons a place you were unlikely to visit as well.”

Will nodded, but the sadness returned. “I’m glad I found you, Eva, but I have news that I need to pass along to you.” He took a deep breath. “Adam is… gone.”

She looked at him sharply. “I do hope he has not fallen victim to Arthur’s lies and given himself to the cause of the Aliomenti.”

Will shook his head. “No, it’s not that. I don’t think he could ever have done that. He’d never liked Arthur. No, I mean he’s gone. Permanently. Forever. I was there when it happened, and he demanded that I find you.” He paused, as Eva’s face registered understanding. “I’m sorry. He died nobly, protecting Hope from attack by Arthur's armed Hunters. It doesn’t make the loss any less, though. For any of us.”