Birth of the Alliance (47 page)

Aaron nodded. “Before we start… I’m going to go inside the X-ray imaging machine. Make sure there’s nothing in me. I don’t want anyone thinking I’ve been compromised while I run this machine and check everyone else. And… we may need to prevent anyone here from leaving until they’ve been checked.”

They wheeled the table bearing Clint’s unconscious form to the side of the room. Aaron showed Eva how to operate the controls, and she used it to perform the scan. The image showed no indication of any chips. “That is to be expected,” Eva said. “The Aliomenti are likely to have perfected this technique only recently. You have been here for quite some time. But it is a relief to confirm nonetheless.”

Hope stepped from her chair. “Check me next,” she said. “Once I’m done, I’ll start the mental probe of Clint.”

“Hope, I don’t think we need to go through the formality of checking you,” Aaron began, as he stepped from the machine. Hope shot him a withering gaze, and he turned back to the controls. “Of course, if that's what you want…”

“It is,” she replied. “As with you, it’s best that there’s no suspicion about any of us. We’ll need to offer to have others check us again when we tell everyone what’s happening.”

Hope was cleared moments later, and she began the mental probe of Clint as Aaron checked and cleared both Eva and Adam. Hope didn’t notice. She was tracing the most deeply held and dominant beliefs and values programmed into Clint's mind, the inviolable rules guiding his behavior. The standard location for the programmed beliefs was clear, but she moved around in Clint’s mind, finding and understanding some of his beliefs, and overriding others. Clearing the overrides was both time-consuming and draining. And it gave her a deeper insight into the man she was examining.

Hope pulled her Energy and her senses back into her own mind, aware that the others were watching her carefully. “He’s clean now. Go ahead and take out the chips.” She stood.

Eva reached out and took hold of her arm. "What did you find?”

Hope looked at her, a tear trickling down her face. "I found a man who’s going to kill himself when he finally realizes what he’s done. We need to tread very carefully.” She took a deep breath. “I’m going to announce that we need everyone to meet near the beach in about half an hour. Can you get the machine there and have it operational?”

Aaron looked thoughtful. “Yes. I should be able to find a power source nearby.” He glanced at Clint. “What should we do with him?”

“I think Adam’s going to keep an eye on him no matter what.”

And she walked off, leaving the others puzzled.

Word spread quickly after Hope’s call for a general meeting at the beach, as speculation raged. Enough people had witnessed the earlier events from afar to inject both fact and rumor into that speculation. Will Stark had been killed by the Hunters. Clint’s words from years earlier had triggered Will’s belief that he needed to be willing to sacrifice his own life to prove he didn’t think himself above the rest of them. Will had faked his death to throw the Hunters off track. Clint led a team of spies in their midst, set to reveal their hidden base to the Leader of the Aliomenti.

All of the speculation fueled a level of suspicion within the Cavern that hadn’t existed until that day. And it was that deeply held emotion of suspicion that Hope addressed first.

“This is not something Will Stark would want,” she said. She stood atop a large box nestled near the water’s edge, and the silence of the crowd allowed everyone to hear the nearby river run into the tunnel-fed lagoon behind her. “This is
not
an organization meant to exist and operate on suspicion and mistrust.”

She glanced around. “Earlier today, Adam returned from watching Will’s mission to implant the pods on one of the Hunters. I will not lie to you. The mission was a success; the pods were planted on Athos. However…” She took a deep breath. “Will was injured in the attack, and teleported far away. We have not heard from him since. The nature of his injury is such that he might
never
return to us.”

“Then it’s true!” a woman shouted. “Will is dead, killed by the Hunters, and it’s all due to Clint’s treachery!”

Hope looked at the speaker. “That, at this point, is what we believe to be true.”

Cries of disbelief erupted, and mingled in were shouts called for revenge and justice for Clint.

Hope held up her hand, and the crowds, ever-respectful of the one called Shadow, regained their earlier quietude. “Clint has been subdued, and we used that opportunity to examine him. While Clint’s words may have triggered Will’s decision to take on this mission, his words were not driven by his own free-will. We used an X-ray scanner to check for additional chips, beyond the one we routinely remove from Aliomenti defectors. That machine located
two
additional chips in Clint. We checked his mind, and found significantly deeper embedded beliefs programmed into him. Those extra chips and the dozen additional beliefs have been removed.”

The crowd went even more silent as the implications of Hope’s words were understood. Anyone in the Cavern might well be operating under an unknown influence.

“But Clint still made Will take on that mission, and now Will’s… gone!” the earlier speaker said. Her voice wasn’t nearly so loud now.

“Will
chose
—he was not
forced
, he was not
tricked
, he
chose
—to reveal his location to the Hunters. He did this because he wanted to be absolutely certain that the technology developed to help free those long held captive made it to the Aliomenti Headquarters. Nothing less than certainty on this point was sufficient for him, and he believed he was the right person to make sure it happened.

“Did Clint’s words at the meeting several years ago motivate him? Perhaps they did. But they also reminded Will, and all of us, of his own true nature. He was our first, and was always the one to take on the greatest challenges that provided the innovations and advantages we enjoy today. He was first of us to undergo the Purge. He was the first of our kind to willingly consume ambrosia, without being completely certain of the effects. He risked his credibility with each new innovation he theorized about. He risked his life to find this cave and begin its transformation to a livable habitat to protect people he’d never met from the scourge of the Hunters and the Assassin. It should be no surprise that he demanded this role. And I have every reason to believe he would have done so regardless of Clint’s antagonism.

“Did Clint—the
manipulated
Clint—mean for Will to take on this effort? Yes, I think he did. I’m the one who did the renewed review of his mind, and what I found there confirms several things. Clint believed he was meant to live here among us as one of us, but to look for opportunities to get Will to expose himself to the Hunters and provide the Hunters further opportunities to capture him. The Aliomenti will believe he’s still on their side, because one of the two chips we just pulled out was a blank. It did nothing. We suspect the original chip we removed when Clint joined us was also a blank. That means two of the three chips inside Clint did nothing. Please be aware of this if you seek to recruit a defector. Search until you find
all
chips, not just one. Look deeper in their minds for far more than the usual implanted beliefs. We too often think the Aliomenti don’t try to innovate in any way, but they do.

“I want to make one point clear. When Clint wakes up, you will be very angry with him. Don’t be. You may want to do him physical harm. Don’t. You may want to shun him. Do anything
but
that. You see, the reason he acted as he did was because of the massive number of belief overrides in his mind. Those overrides were needed because Clint’s true beliefs, the ones active now, were so powerfully a match for the Alliance that Arthur needed to literally beat Clint’s mind into submission. He will wake, find himself here, and be overjoyed. When he finds out what he did, he will be truly and genuinely devastated. It will not be an act. Do not shun him. Support him. What has happened to this point was not representative of the real Clint. He needs our support to get through this. The acts you are angry about were, effectively, performed by Arthur Lowell. Do not take out your frustrations on an innocent man.”

Quiet percolated among those present. Clint’s prone form rested upon a table near Hope, where Aaron watched monitors tracking the man’s overall health. Adam’s initial assault and the complete Energy drain, coupled with the mental deprogramming from Hope, had left the man in a virtual coma. Hope looked out at the crowd, and watched as the hardened faces softened, watched a man they knew as a friend breathe deeply, unaware that his fate was being defined in this very moment. The tension and anger had evaporated to large degree.

But there was still great sadness.

“What more can you tell us about Will’s condition?” This time, it was Judith who spoke.

Hope looked at Adam, who stepped forward. “I was there, and at Will’s insistence I promised I would not interfere. As intended, the Hunters captured Will. While they were waiting for the transport craft with the Dampering cell to arrive to take Will to Headquarters, he broke free. In the scuffle that followed, he appeared to injure Aramis—I did not see what happened from my vantage point—and also sliced open Athos’ cheek. He appeared to be talking to Porthos when Athos hit Will in the back of the head with the hilt of his sword. Will was stunned by the blow, staggered forward, and fell right into Porthos’ sword. The sword vanished to the hilt. Will teleported away seconds later with a huge burst of Energy.”

“Did you see any blood?”

“No, but I was too far away, and he vanished too quickly. His teleportation carried the sword with him as well.”

“Is he dead? Did you see a body?”

“I did not see a body. He was alive when I last saw him because he teleported away. I struggle to think he survived a stabbing in which an entire sword was shoved into his abdomen, however.” Adam’s face looked pained once more as he uttered the words.

More questions were shouted, but Hope raised her hand. “We have much work to do here. We must, for the time being, assume that Will is to be absent indefinitely. As we do not know
where
he is, we cannot send anyone to help him. If he still lives, he will need to recover on his own, or reach out for help when he can. For now, though, the revelations about Clint must drive our immediate course of action.” She looked to Aaron.

Aaron spoke up. “Given the revelations about Clint—the extra tracking chips, the extra mental programming—we encourage everyone to undergo both imaging tests and mental scans. I have the imaging machine here, near the beach, so that everyone may not only participate if they choose, but have multiple witnesses to observe the results. The Shadow, Eva, Adam and I went through these tests as soon as we realized what had happened with Clint, and each of us is happy to go through the process again if anyone wants us to do so.”

Adam spoke next. “We suspect that the extreme efforts taken in Clint’s case a relatively recent innovation. What it means is that those here the least amount of time are the most likely to be affected.”

A man named Rorke stepped forward. “I was only recently recruited away from the Aliomenti, and I am very concerned that what happened with Clint happened to me as well. I have no desire to betray the Alliance. I grieve at Will’s loss. I don’t want to be the cause of something like that. Adam’s right. People like me are the most likely to be affected, so we should be checked first. Let's not waste time checking the Shadow for signs of malevolent intent.” He walked toward the imaging machine. With his example, others, also recent recruits, stepped forward in line behind him.

The imaging machine failed to find additional tracking chips inside anyone, recent recruit or otherwise. They found two very recent recruits with modified beliefs that had the potential to cause trouble, though those beliefs were unlikely to matter outside an all-out direct battle with the Aliomenti. Cleared individuals worked together to ensure nothing was missed. The community rallied together as never before, bonding in their effort to ensure the safety of their home and the genuine actions of their neighbors.

Twelve hours later, through their concerted efforts, every person within the Cavern had been checked and cleared. There were no more Clints among them.

Hope stayed with Clint in the lab that night. The gentle beeping of the machines tracking his pulse rate kept her awake, and she could smell the aromas of the various chemical mixes researchers had tested throughout the previous day. Clint remained asleep on a bed, locked down by netting much like Adam had used to capture him the day before. They feared he'd be a danger when he woke up, primarily to himself. The netting was there to keep him from doing something he’d later regret.

At four o’clock in the morning, Clint began to stir. Hope stood up, watching him.

His eyes fluttered open, and he tried to sit up. When he found himself restrained, he tried to use his Energy to move his body out of his restraints. His panic rose when he realized he couldn’t find the Energy within to do something he’d so long taken for granted.

Clint turned his head and spotted Hope. “Shadow? What are you doing here? Why… why am I being restrained?”

“You must listen, Clint. And you must understand… what happened to you was not of your own design, or your own choice. Do you understand?”