Birth of the Alliance (48 page)

Clint’s eyes widened. “No. What’s going on? What’s happening to me?”

“Your programming by the Aliomenti went far, far deeper than any of us suspected, and likely deeper than even you knew. We found additional tracking chips inside you, dozens of guiding principles and beliefs overridden, far beyond what other defectors had.”

Clint's look of panic deepened. “But… why?” Then his look of panic turned to one of horror, as he realized what her words meant. “What… what have I done?”

Hope took a deep breath. “Words you expressed while under that influence are widely viewed to have driven Will Stark to sacrifice his own freedom to prove his worth to our group.”

“But Will doesn’t need to prove anything!” Clint protested. “He proved everything he needed to prove to me when I watched him walk away from the Aliomenti three centuries ago, and nothing made me happier than to finally be able to be part of his group. Why would I…” His voice broke off again, “The reprogramming… it made me question him? And it made him… sacrifice his… his freedom?”

“Will made his own choice, Clint,” Hope replied. “Your words only reminded him of what he wanted, and expected, to do. The unfortunate part…” She looked him directly in the eye. “In the course of allowing himself to be captured, Will and the Hunters fought. Will managed to injure both Aramis and Athos, but in the end, he was staggered by a blow to the head. And he was stabbed.”

Clint’s eyes widened in terror. “No. Please… please… this can’t be true. Tell me it isn’t true!”

Hope shook her head sadly. “I’m afraid it is. Adam was watching from a distance, too far to stop it. Will was stabbed in the abdomen, up to the hilt, and he teleported away a massive distance. We do not know where he went, or if he’s still alive.”

Clint screamed, with horror and grief so genuine it drove Hope to tears as well. She watched as he fought against his restraints, and their fear he might try to harm himself when he learned the truth proved to be right on the mark. When he realized that escape was impossible, he finally relented, and turned to face Hope. “Kill me. Please. I can’t live like this, knowing what I’ve done. I don’t deserve to live.” His voice was a passionate whisper.

Hope shook her head. “I won’t. It wasn’t
you
, Clint; it was an extension of Arthur using your body and voice to act. You had no more to do with what happened than
I
did. The community is fully aware of this truth. Those who doubted, saw the damage done to your mind after we’d gone through and destroyed Arthur’s imprint. They all marveled at the strength of character it must have taken you not to kill Will as he slept here. We are all amazed that, in all the times you’d gone Outside and played your role as part of the Aliomenti business machine, you never betrayed yourself as having joined the Alliance or lived here among us.”

“How can you stand to be around me?” Clint asked, as if he’d not heard her. His voice remained weak. “How can you look at me without it reminding you of your loss? Of
our
loss?”

Hope sighed. “Everything I see reminds me of him. Should I blind myself?” She shook her head. “Clint, listen to me, very carefully. I want you to think about what Will would want you to do. You’ve been manipulated horribly by Arthur. It took an incredible effort to turn you to his will. Would Will want you in misery for the rest of your life? Would he want you to
take
your own life? No. He wouldn’t. What would he want you to do?”

Clint paused, and with a deep shuddering breath, composed himself. “No. He wouldn’t want me to do either of those things. He’d want me to continue to be the change I want in the world. And what I want in the world is to see Arthur's influence in it destroyed.” He looked at her, and she could see a new spark there that had nothing to do with Energy. “I need to go and make sure that the prisoners at Headquarters escape.
That’s
the change I want to see.” He paused for a moment. “You said there were additional chips you had to pull out of me? Did one of them have the tracker in it?”

Hope nodded. “Yes. Why?”

“I'd like to have that chip. I have a message to send to Arthur Lowell and his Hunters. And with that chip, I know
just
how to send it.”

He smiled.

The spark was back in Clint. And Hope knew that the spirit of the Alliance, a spirit given birth by Will Stark centuries earlier, would continue to live on and thrive even in his absence.

There was no greater gift they could give their founder.

XXIX

Birth

January 7, 1995

Concrete slabs shaped in just the right fashion gave the hospital’s exterior a marbled tile appearance, punctuated by small windows providing patients limited views of the world outside. An ample parking lot was filled to near capacity by the sedans and minivans of patients and hospital staff alike. Puffs of vapor materialized in the cold air near the tailpipes of running cars, often from vehicles drivers started before retrieving a patient in an effort to heat their vehicle against the bitter winter chill. A man buried beneath a heavy coat worked frantically to clear his dash of the snow and ice that had accumulated as he’d been inside the hospital.

A small blue minivan pulled into one of the few empty spots. A tall man with jet black hair and gray eyes jumped out, nearly stumbling on a thin strip of ice near his door. He locked the vehicle with his key and walked briskly toward the hospital entrance. He’d dropped his wife off moments earlier and ensured that she’d gotten attention from the hospital staff. After receiving their assurances that she’d be taken to the maternity ward, he’d raced to his still-running minivan and parked the vehicle.

He remembered that the maternity ward was located on the tenth floor, as he’d made the trip several times when Seth had been born five years earlier. Their little boy had wanted to come, had wanted to be there when his sister was born. Richard and Rosemary Stark had told the little boy that hospitals had rules and that those rules said that big brothers needed to stay home and make sure their little sister’s room was ready for her. The little boy had smiled at the grownup responsibility contained in that statement, and had barely noticed when his parents left. The sitter, a neighborhood college student, would be with Seth while his parents were gone. They had no kin to call to invite to join them in the celebration of the completion of their family.

Richard slid out of the elevator on the tenth floor and went to the reception desk. The on-duty nurse informed him that Rosemary was in room 1018, and Richard made his way there, his excitement at the impending birth of his last child drowning out the steady beeping noises emitted by the rooms lining the hallway, ignoring the crying babies entering the world or demanding to be fed. He reached room 1018 and found a nurse standing by the closed door. “She's getting her epidural right now. You can go in in just a few minutes. She’s pretty far along; you shouldn’t have to wait long.”

Richard paced the hallway, excited by the news. He and Rosemary had planned their lives out, and everything had gone just as they'd intended. He would turn thirty in a few months, and at that relatively young age he and Rosemary would complete their family—one boy, one girl, replacing themselves in the world through their offspring. Their children would be fully grown, self-sufficient adults before he turned fifty. He and Rosemary would work hard, using their rapidly growing 401k portfolio of tech stocks to retire not long after, and spend the remainder of their days traveling, visiting their future grandchildren, and enjoying the finer things in life that wealth could bring. If Rosemary was already that close to delivering, the plan seemed to be getting that vote of confidence from the universe.

Full speed ahead.

When he finally entered the room, the anesthesia in the epidural had taken effect. Rather than the wincing, face-tightening pain he’d seen in Rosemary during their drive to the hospital, he instead saw his wife happy and content. “How are you?” he asked.

“I don't know who invented the epidural, but I think I’m in love.”

Richard offered a long-suffering sigh. “I can’t possibly compete with drugs.” He took her hand, and she gave him a reassuring squeeze.

The nurses left. A few moments later, a man wearing a doctor's coat walked in, introducing himself as an intern. The man told Richard and Rosemary that the hospital was part of a group of innovative institutions testing a new technique which allowed them to identify numerous disease markers. They were offering the service free of charge to all mothers- and fathers-to-be. It was a simple blood test. Richard and Rosemary communicated with no more than a glance, and moments later both had provided blood samples for the test. The intern thanked them, capped the samples, and walked out of the room.

The doctor walked in moments later, holding Rosemary’s chart, a frown upon her face. She glanced up at them. "Mr. and Mrs. Stark, you’ve refused to hear the results of any tests conducted during Rosemary’s prenatal care, correct?”

The couple both nodded, beaming brightly. “We
know
what we're having,” Rosemary stated. Her voice was firm, emphatic. “There was simply no point.”

“I admire your faith in your own judgment,” the doctor replied crisply. “But I must warn you that there is a significant chance that this delivery will result in a C-section.”

Rosemary’s face fell. That was
not
part of the plan. “I… I don’t understand. How is that possible?”

Richard glared at the doctor. “Why wasn’t this mentioned previously?”

“The results of the ultrasound tests hinted strongly at this probability. If you’ll recall, all of the doctors in my practice repeatedly requested that we spend the time to discuss the test results, and you refused each time. We were told, in no uncertain terms, that you had no interest in hearing any information related to what we learned. However, you no longer have that option, because we are at delivery day. I am telling you now: you are very likely to deliver successfully only via a C-section.”

“No,” whispered Rosemary. “That… that
can’t
be right. This… this
can’t
be happening.”

“I’m afraid it is.” The doctor's voice was professional, calm. She was not enjoying delivering the message any more than the couple was enjoying receiving it. “We can begin with the C-section. Or we can try to avoid it. If you choose the latter option, I reserve the right to order the emergency C-section if and when I deem it a medical necessity.”

“I don’t want to be cut open,” Rosemary whispered, tears streaking her face. "Just… just give me my baby girl, healthy and happy.”

The doctor's face hardened and her eyes narrowed. “Right. I’ll assemble the team and we’ll begin the delivery momentarily.”

Hours later, Rosemary was exhausted, Richard was beside himself with worry, and the doctor and attending nurses were whispering among themselves. “I’m sorry,” the doctor told them. “It’s simply not going to happen this way.” She turned to the head nurse. “Alert them to prep the room for surgery.”

Rosemary was too tired to argue. Richard was too emotionally drained to notice what they’d said. He instead stared at his wife’s face, streaked with sweat and tears, her eyes closed as if in a deep sleep already.

They wheeled her down the hall toward the surgery room. Richard never left Rosemary’s side. He held her hand while they raised the surgical curtain. A nurse fitted the hairnet on his head, helped him into latex gloves after forcing him to wash his hands vigorously. He was at her side moments later, wondering what part of their plan this experience represented.

The process seemed to take hours. Doctors and nurses bustled in and out of the surgical room, their movements a dance Richard didn’t understand. The anesthesiologist checked Rosemary’s drips, pronounced everything sound, and left. The intern returned to act as an observer, learning how to handle such a situation in his own career, but would also fetch supplies, often bringing them even before they were requested. The obstetrician watched it all with a detached calm, her face never changing from the slight agitated frown they’d seen since she’d first entered Rosemary’s room. Richard started to wonder, for the first time, what she wasn’t telling them. What they’d foolishly insisted she
not
tell them. This entire process couldn’t be normal, couldn’t be what you went through to get your baby girl into the world so you could take her home and continue with your life’s plan. It had been so much simpler with Seth, almost like a vacation, save for the part where Rosemary had to push and cry and scream. They’d both forgotten that part until now; now, it seemed an almost heaven-like experience by comparison.

The doctor scrubbed her hands down and went behind the surgical curtain. Richard watched her as he continued to hold his wife’s hand. Her eyes never changed their emotional timbre.

They heard a great deal of conversation, and, Richard thought, voices filled with shock and disbelief. What were they seeing that was triggering that type of reaction? He longed to know, to go see for himself. The realization that to do so would mean leaving Rosemary’s side, and would mean he’d need to view the inside of her abdominal cavity, held him back. The waiting, the beeping of the heartbeat monitor, the smells of antiseptics and sweat, were too much for him to bear.