Birth of the Alliance (35 page)

Will thought again. “I don’t think so, though we weren’t close with any of them. I guess that means we
can’t
rule out a neighborhood full of the Alliance, can we?”

“No, we can’t,” Adam agreed. “It just means that we’ll need to be sure that we either own and occupy those homes, or that we’re in position to watch them.”

“Along with the homes of the other humans directly involved, and their families," Hope added as a reminder. She nodded at Adam. “May I suggest adding a note to ask Will to try to remember names once a year until he’s successful? If it doesn’t happen, we’ll start watching those who move in or are hired near the neighborhood to figure who is at risk. One way or another, we need to be sure that we take care of everyone. Or as many as we possibly can.”

Will nodded, but he felt useless. He needed his memory sharp, but it was failing him. He understood that the human brain wasn’t meant to recall memories from nine hundred years earlier, but it didn’t lessen the regret he felt over his inability to name the people involved. That failure would delay Adam’s ability to protect them, and it might mean people that could be saved—not counting the two guards—would perish as a result.

Eva headed out to work with her defense squad members, mentioning that they were going to interview three people who had witnessed Hunter attacks during their last journey Outside. All three were direct recruits from the human population, and they’d been uncertain how to react when the Hunters and Assassin began the process of abducting and executing a combined dozen people. Eva’s team wanted to understand the tactics that were employed to track and subdue the defectors. They could analyze the approaches used by the Hunters and Assassin, look for weaknesses to exploit, and devise training and technology—like the sword splitter—to help Alliance members thwart those efforts.

If they could thwart detection efforts, they could save the lives of countless innocent humans caught in the crosshairs.

Will sulked for a moment, feeling sorry for himself over his inability to contribute, and then stood and left the room. Adam followed. The men heard a commotion near the beach, and walked in that direction.

Peter was there with a new recruit, one he’d brought to the Cavern direct from the human world based upon her lack of Energy. Peter escorted her through the crowds there to relax on the sand, stopping to greet friends and introduce the newcomer. The pair eventually met up with Will and Adam.

“Maria, I’d like to introduce you to Will and Adam,” Peter said, nodding at each man in turn. “Gentlemen, meet Maria. She’s a new recruit, and just finished her first voyage here to the Cavern.”

Adam shook her hand. “Welcome home, Maria.”

Will shook Maria’s hand in greeting as well, smiling. While he was happy that Peter had found yet another new recruit, he was struck by the emotional force of Adam’s greeting. He’d not said “home” in reference to the Cavern to represent Maria’s new perspective. Adam had long thought of the Cavern as a place to work; Atlantis was his home. But there was a powerful shift in his emotional attachment to the Cavern implicit in his words. To Adam, the Cavern had now become home. It was the place where the people he cared about, the people he loved, all lived. It was the place where he spent his most meaningful time.

The Cavern was no mere work location for Adam now. It was the place he’d defend above all others.

And those who lived there, his new family, were people he’d defend at all costs as well.

XXI

Memories

1977 A.D.

Will wriggled his toes to make certain he wasn’t completely immobilized. The chair felt coffin-like, like a dentist’s chair that wrapped him in a cocoon. Graham had explained that they needed to reduce current sensory stimuli for the machine to work at an optimal level. They’d already checked it for soundproofing, and Will had determined that white noise was piped in that drowned out even the sounds of his own breathing. The chair, when closed up, shut off all light save for the screens positioned in front of his face.

They hadn’t done anything with his sense of taste, though. He could still taste his lunch. He hung on to that as his last bit of humanity.

The narrow cocoon provided him only a slight glimpse of the rest of the room at the moment. The others in the room were seated around a large wooden table. Viewscreens were positioned in front of each chair. Will could feel the cool breeze piped into the room to maintain temperature control.

Graham leaned over the narrow opening, checking the leads taped to Will’s head. “Are you comfortable?”

“Would it matter if I said no?”

Graham blanched. “There are limitations to what we can do. I realize it’s not the most… luxurious seating, but—”

“I’ll be okay, Graham.”

Graham nodded, nervous. “I’m going to close it up now. We’re monitoring your vitals, of course.”

Will nodded. Graham swung the panel around and it closed with an audible click, plunging Will into full sensory deprivation. His mind flashed back to his first visit to the Cavern, when he’d teleported into an airless void. He thought about Hope, who as Elizabeth Lowell had suffered through encasement in a true coffin, having nothing with her inside that simple pine box but the trust that Will would keep her alive.

A slight wisp of air tickled his skin, the pure oxygen that enabled him to breathe. He wiggled his toes, and they felt like they were miles away.

Seconds later, the lower screen in front of him burst forth with light, and Will was forced to blink to allow his eyes to adjust.

“Will! Are you okay? Your pulse just shot up.” Graham’s voice was in his ear, and quite loud. Will’s adjusted eyes detected his frantic face in the screen that had lit up.

“Bright light from the screen in the pitch black startled my eyes. Maybe let it turn on gradually, or just have it on when you close the door on this contraption?”

“Oh. Sorry, Will.” Graham’s face flushed on the screen. “I’ll make a note about that. I’m hoping we can turn this into a simple helmet in the future, but… that should be an easy temporary fix. How are you feeling?”

“I think we lost all of my limbs but other than that, I’m OK. Can you drop the volume in here? The speaker is right next to my ear.”

A pause. “That better?”

“Very much so.”

He could hear Hope’s voice in his ear, and her face, sporting her dark-haired appearance, appeared on the lower screen. “Graham, is there a more traditional camera in there? I want a picture of Will with everything sticking out of his hair.”

There was the sound of laughter. “Ha. Ha,” Will grumped. “I’d stick out my tongue but I’d just end up licking the screen.”

“That’s gross.”

“If I lose sensation in my mouth I might be desperate enough to give it a taste.”

“Will, if you’re truly that uncomfortable we can—”

Will chuckled. “I’m okay, Graham. It’s just a strange sensation. Are we ready?”

Graham cleared his throat. “Before we do, I just want to make sure you’re comfortable with what’s going to happen. This is, by its very nature, a very invasive technology. People might see things you’d rather they didn’t.”

Will tried to shrug, but failed. “I’m living in a community of powerful telepaths who could see what they wanted to see in the right circumstances anyway. And this is important.”

Graham nodded. “Is everyone else ready?” On the screen, Graham’s head turned side-to-side. He received nods, for he nodded once. “Okay, Will. It’s your show now. We’ll be quiet and turn off the exterior monitor.”

The lower screen blinked out, and Will was once more plunged into darkness.

Graham’s invention purported to project the images and sounds from the subject’s memory. The idea was that conscious recollections of events were tainted by beliefs and where one’s conscious focus might exist at a time. Will might be in a room and notice only Hope, but his mind would record the physical details of the room and other people there. It would also accurately remember words spoken and sounds generated. If Graham’s invention worked, Will could direct his thought to the memories of future events, and those images and sounds could be recorded for study by Adam and others involved in the efforts relating to 2030.

With his body sealed in a cocoon-like structure and all external mental stimuli extinguished, Will did as Graham had directed. He focused on the events of the day he’d been attacked, trying to force his mind to pull up as many sensory images as it could. He kept his eyes on the screen directly in front of him, ignoring the lower screen where the faces of those outside had appeared a moment earlier.

The screen remained blank. Will considered for a moment, and then closed his eyes. Though he couldn’t see anything in the total darkness, the fact that his eyes remained open provided him a lesser focus on the images in his mind than he’d experienced with his eyes closed.

He could see the walls surrounding his neighborhood. He could hear the water trickling along in the moat. He could feel the mid-winter chill of the frosty air. The smell of a distant wood fire pleased his olfactory sensibilities. Will was out of his car, walking toward the guard tower, feeling the heavy, polished black shoes on his feet. He could feel himself tighten the overcoat to help lessen the chill in the air.

He could hear gasps, and realized that those sounds weren’t coming from his memory. They were coming from the microphones of the others in the room, piped into his cocoon and projected by the microphone near his ear. With great caution, he opened his eyes.

The neighborhood was on the screen, the walls slanting up and out, the moat with the water he’d hinted might be poisoned, the barbed wire on top of the walls, the huge trees they’d left almost entirely undisturbed as they’d built it all. As the image moved, showing a slight bounce as one would see while walking along, he was able to make out the words on a sign ahead.

De Gray Estates.

“I remember,” he whispered. He felt a chill inside, not one driven by the cool oxygen pumped into the cocoon. It was the chill of recognition, the anticipation of what he’d seen and experienced that day so long ago.

He saw the guard station on his left, empty, and the forty-foot-tall guard tower to the right. A police car sat on the right hand side of the driveway, lights flashing, siren silenced, parked behind a limousine. An older man with hair of silver stood near the opened rear door of the limousine, fanning an elderly woman inside.

“Myra,” Will said. “The woman’s name is Myra. She lived in the neighborhood.”

The images shifted again. Will was walking toward the police officer, noting the heavy overcoat the man wore. The chill in the air added a slightly rosy tint to the man’s deep ebony cheeks.

“Michael… Cook? I can’t remember his last name. It’s something
like
Cook, but that’s not it. He’s involved somehow… more with something that would happen after this. I can’t remember that part right now, though.”

He heard himself engage the officer, inquire about the elderly woman’s condition, and then examine the buildings. He could feel a sense of pride at the security the walls provided. He’d wanted more people on the job, but the laws of the time wouldn’t allow him to purchase the weaponry needed. Instead, he’d made the fortress itself as impregnable as possible, rendering the lack of weaponry and limited number moot. If someone had the resources to scale the walls, destroy the walls, or threaten the guards into allowing them inside? Such people would have the resources to invade
anything
. The guards provided a human touch, a means of monitoring entry to the community. The technology was likely sufficient, but the residents enjoyed the fact that the “guards” knew them by name and could wave them in. Will winced. Those unarmed men had faced the Hunters and the Assassin.

He wanted to tell Adam that they needed to protect them, somehow.

His view panned up, taking in the brick tower up the sides until it stopped on the all-glass walls of the guard’s quarters at the top. The clear walls, constructed of bullet-proof glass, provided a panoramic view of the neighborhood and its surroundings. Will’s onscreen memory showed the huge, gaping hole in the wall nearest the driveway, shattered by an incredible force.

“The guard… the one in the tower… the Assassin killed him, threw his body through the glass and into the other building… that guard’s name was something with a D.”

The view panned to shards of glass lying on the ground. The shards looked like pieces of ice at first, but Will remembered now: there had been no precipitation that year, no moisture on the ground that could freeze. His gaze, and the onscreen view, panned to the smaller building to his left, to the massive hole in the roof where the guard’s body had entered from above. Will watched his view switch to the police officer, and the man had moved to the window offering a view into the building. The officer had stepped to the side and vomited after viewing the interior. The officer’s voice came across the speakers for all of them to hear. Two fatalities. Suspect or suspects at large. Will had known then, with no less certainty than he did now, that whoever had committed those murders was after Hope and Josh.

The vision of the officer viewing the carnage inside the guard station triggered more memories in Will. “The other guard… a name with a G. Wait… no, the woman, his wife or fiancé… hers was the name with the G. Gena? Yes, that's it, Gena. She was very young, too. His was a name with an M. Michael? No, that was officer. Matthew? That’s not right either. I’ll think of it. Definitely an M name, though.”