by Gareth Otton
“I know this,” Pamela spat, regaining some confidence. “I thought I had proven to Kuruk that he was misguided. I didn’t want to break him of the notion altogether because we still need him to act for our interests, but I wanted to mitigate some of the damage already—”
“You failed,” Elias interrupted, done with her excuses. “And as a result, this happened.”
He grabbed a remote from his desk and pressed a button. A quiet hum was all that could be heard of the motor that lowered the enormous television from the ceiling with a video clip pre-loaded. There was no sound as Elias had no intention of being subjected to this story again. Instead it was just video footage of the aftermath of the Todmoryn attack. He watched Pamela’s face as it played out and recognised her disgust. Whether that was from the loss of life or for how it impacted her, he didn’t know.
Seeing that she was about to speak, he pressed another button to load a new video, and this time there was sound to interrupt her.
“So you’re telling us that tonight’s attack was not the Chidren of ADaM as they claim, but an opening act of a war?”
The voice belonged to a young woman who was climbing Elias’ list of people he hated. It was the voice of Lizzie Bradley on her ridiculous YouTube show.
“This attack and others like it carried out all over Britain,” the voice of the Prime Minister answered. Elias had to look away from Pamela and out over the city when he heard this voice in an attempt to regain his calm.
“We have suspected for some time that the aftermath of the Merging and the creation of the Borderlands could lead to global conflict. It is—”
“Global conflict?” Lizzie Bradley asked, shocked.
“Yes, global. As much as Jacob Baker and his dreamwalkers who attacked Cardiff last month were misguided, in one way they were not wrong. The Borderlands offers the greatest opportunity for change this world has ever seen. Unfortunately, it is an opportunity that is locked up in Great Britain. Though we have been more than willing to share this resource with the rest of the world, there are a lot of countries who can’t sleep easy without control of the Borderlands in their hands.
“Across the globe, you will find that the major powers of the world have severely withdrawn their armies from earlier conflicts. This is because they are preparing for something big, and this attack is the start of that movement.”
“So who was behind the Christmas Eve Massacre?”
Elias sneered at her name for the event. It had gone viral almost immediately, and it was the kind of name that people would not just remember, but would go down in the history books.
“This atrocity was caused by Kuruk Campbell at the behest of the American President.”
“You’re kidding? One man did all this?”
It was interesting that the reporter didn’t even try to question America’s involvement. She was fully informed before this interview ever took place and was asking just the right questions to help the interview along and sell the Prime Minister’s argument. The trouble was, Elias was sure people were going to eat this up.
They wouldn’t be wrong to, a dark part of his mind whispered. They’re telling the truth after all.
Elias choked it down and turned his attention back to the interview.
“Of course it wasn’t just one man. It was one man with the help of his own personal army, given dreamcatchers of their own and trained to use them for war, all at the expense of the American tax payer. Right now there are five thousand such men active in Ameri—”
His voice abruptly quieted as Elias shut off the TV and sent it back into the ceiling.
“No one will believe that,” Pamela blurted. “His approval ratings are in the gutter and it sounds like a desperate attempt by an unpopular man to excuse himself for not being able to stop a terrorist group.”
“That’s one way of looking at it,” Elias agreed. “Another is that he just laid enough groundwork for people all over the world to question things. Yesterday morning there wasn’t a soul alive who even considered America could be behind something like this. Now the idea has been planted in their heads, people will start looking for proof, if only to prove him wrong.
“What they’ll find are a massive reduction of American troops in active war zones, a rise in military recruitment, and if they are really good, at least five thousand soldiers who have disappeared from the face of the earth so that we could train them in what was supposed to be a secret programme. How the hell did he find out about that? Five thousand is too specific a number for him not to know for sure.”
Pamela looked at the floor and squirmed.
“We think he got a spy into the group. They had one of their agents to join the army with a fake back story and he worked his way up through the training camps before earning Kuruk’s interest and being offered a spot amongst the dreamcatchers. We only found out about this the other day when one of Kuruk’s people came clean about one of their own disappearing.”
“Yet more proof that you don’t have control over there. It makes me feel like you’re doing this on purpose.”
Pamela rushed to assure him of all the reasons that was not the case, but Elias was done listening.
“Enough. This is the last time I will call you here to answer for your failures. If it happens again, you will be replaced.”
The shock of his words stunned the woman into a silence that stretched out for ten long seconds.
“You... You can’t do that. I’m a sitting member of the Eidolon Council. I’m the President of the United States for God’s sake. You think I’m so easy to replace.”
Elias laughed.
“I have been head of this council for over two centuries, Pamela. I have seen people like you come and go a thousand times. The reason for that is that I have a backup plan for every occasion. Don’t think that being President isolates you from that.” He grinned and said, “You thought you were so clever when you chose Russel Craig to be your Vice President instead of the eidolon candidate I suggested. Probably because of what he admitted to you on the night after your birthday, right? All that leverage he gave you over himself.”
“You can’t know that,” she whispered, horrified at his knowledge. “There was no one there that night to hear what he told me.”
“I told him what to say,” Elias answered. To accentuate his point, he fished out his phone and called a number he had ready to go. It only took a second before a face materialised on the screen, that of the Vice President of the United States.”
“Merry Christmas, Sir. What can I help you with?” he answered cheerfully.
“Russel, it’s good to see you. I’ve got someone here I need you to say hello to for me. I need to prove a point.”
The smile slipped from the face of the sixty-year-old man on the phone and he nodded his head.
“Oh, it’s time for that, is it?”
“Almost. For now I’m just proving a point.”
He turned the phone around so that Pamela could confirm who he was talking to, and the poor woman trembled.
“Pamela, I’m sorry. It was nothing personal, but you should know better than to go against the wishes of the Eidolon Council,” Russel said to the woman.
“You... But what you...” Pamela was struggling to speak, and Elias cut her off.
“Russell, that’s all for now. Go back to your celebrations and have a great day.”
“Thank you, sir, and you as well.”
Elias hung up and placed the phone on his desk, looking at Pamela and judging that it was time to drive his point home.
“I don’t blame you for being ambitious. You are an eidolon after all. But sometimes we need to be reminded of the facts of the world. You are not so powerful that you can’t be replaced with a single phone call. While you were concentrating on getting yourself elected, something I facilitated by the way, less you forget, I was playing the long game to set up all the pieces around you so you could be of the most use. Russell is the son of an old friend. I own half of
the Senate, more than half of the Supreme Court, and of course I own you. You have been fighting for twenty years to get where you are now, but I have had plans in motion for two centuries. Your personal advancement was just another one of those plans.”
He stepped away from his desk and straightened out his suit.
“Enough. I think I have made my point. It’s time for you to get back to doing what I put you in Washington to do. I need results, Pamela. I am this close...” he manoeuvred his index finger and thumb of his right hand to be an inch apart. “...to calling it quits on you and taking control of this myself. I haven’t had to do that in seventy years, and I don’t want to have to do it now.
“Get back to America, get the balls moving to counter every single point the Prime Minister made in that video, and reign in that rabid dog you have set loose on the United Kingdom. Kill him if you have to. This is your greatest challenge. I trust you’ll be able to rise to it.”
Pressing a button on the side of his desk, he signaled the man who had shown Pamela into the office. The double doors opened instantly.
“Deacon, be a good man and show the President back to her car. She’s ready to go.”
Deacon didn’t hesitate. He rushed to Pamela’s side, took her arm, and led the trembling woman from the room. His movements were confident, but then they should be, as it wasn’t the first time he’d had to do something like this.
Elias turned away from them and waited for the click of closing doors before he allowed himself to relax and look out over his city once more. He wanted to believe this little chat would lead to the resolution of his problems in the UK, but he was losing faith in Pamela.
It wasn’t entirely her fault. Kuruk was a wild card and the combination of the Dreamwalker, the Prime Minister, Stella Martin and Lizzie Bradley were proving surprisingly competent in their opposition to his plans. Whether it was the reporter somehow surviving her stabbing, the Prime Minister surviving every trial thrown his way, Stella Martin continuing to threaten the exposure of their kind, or the Dreamwalker daring to show off powers like the world had never seen since the eidolon reduced themselves, they were all thorns in his side.
However, he couldn’t deny that it was good to have competent opposition again. He had enjoyed the easy life for far too long and he was worried about it making him soft. It was good to grind himself against an arduous task every now and again, to hone his edge and keep him sharp.
But he was nearly done with that now and the time was coming to deal with them once and for all so he could move on with his plans for the Borderlands, and the future that place would help him secure. Whether he had to drag the world kicking and screaming, Elias would use the Borderlands to usher in a new age for mankind and eidolon alike.
Thinking of a brighter future, a smile settled onto his face as he once more looked out over his city.
15
Sunday, 25th December 2016
19:12
Everything was chaos.
The wide road separating the outer walls of Cardiff Castle and the city centre was rammed with people. They had been huddled close together, partly to fight off the chill of the frigid air, and partly because there were so many people who wanted to show support for the victims of Todmoryn.
Now, with nightmares raining down from the sky, the support had turned to screams that echoed off the outer walls of the castle as people tried to flee but had nowhere to go. Danger existed in every direction and the crowd panicked, transforming the street into a mosh pit.
It was all Tad could do to stay on his feet as bodies thudded into him from every direction. Were it not for the sturdy presence of Growler at his side, he might not have managed even that.
“Tad, watch out!”
Tad grunted as he was knocked over by a heavy weight that landed on top of him. The ghost that pushed him over held him down as something metallic and frisbee shaped whizzed overhead, whistling as it cut through the air. Something warm and wet sprayed over Tad like a heavy, sticky rain. Tad glanced at his hand to find it covered in what looked like black liquid in the darkness, but he knew it was blood.
However, it wasn’t his blood, and considering it was a ghost holding him in place, it wasn’t their blood, either. Looking around frantically, he found the victim. A young woman’s face was locked in a permanent grimace of horror on a head that was no longer attached to a body. The sight turned Tad’s stomach, and he looked away. It was just in time to see the glimmer of a street light reflecting off the razor edge of the thing that would have cut his head off had Rodney not seen it in time.
Adrenaline flooded his veins at the near miss, making his fingers shake and filling him with energy that he wanted to burn off. Therefore, when the ghost jumped to his feet, Tad didn’t need to accept Rodney’s offered hand to help him up.
“Thanks,” he said. “You were right, you’re more useful not merged with me right now.”
Rodney smiled a tight-lipped smile in response, but it didn’t last. The young man was focused as his eyes darted around the terrified crowd, looking for signs of danger. Realising he should do the same, Tad ignored his rushing adrenaline and tried to focus.
There were thousands of people crowding him, rushing in panic as they tried to escape the nightmare. It created a level of chaos Tad had no chance of controlling. With the nature of this nightmare, it made it much harder for him to help.
This impromptu gathering to show support for the people of Todmoryn and to send a message that the people of the Borderlands would not stand for terrorist attacks had unfortunately offered an opportunity Kuruk’s people couldn’t afford to miss.
“We need to get these people out of here,” Tad said.
“Trevors and his people are trying, but they’re not having much luck,” Rodney pointed out.
Tad didn’t answer, instead concentrating on trying to spot more of the metallic nightmares that were terrorising the crowd. Even as panicked as they were, people were avoiding the headless body of the young woman, so finally Tad had a small pocket of stillness in which to stand and search. Thanks to his height he could see over most of the crowd, but he found what he was looking for higher still. Overhead, hundreds of pigeons filled the night sky.
Unlike normal pigeons covered with soft grey feathers, these were encased in polished steel, their feathers ending in razor-sharp edges. Red eyes glowed as they sought their prey, and soon they started to dive.
They didn’t dive like birds of prey, instead they spread their wings wide, the feathers elongating and interlocking. Soon they formed a single blade that resembled a kite on the wind. The birds then tucked in their heads as the wings continued to spread outward and the feathers continued to grow and interlock until it became a simple disc of polished steel that was spinning down from the sky like a circular-saw blade, but with a lot more weight.
Ten such discs descended on the terrified people with frightening speed, and Tad acted on instinct. He flung out his good hand toward the nearest and a beam of pure white light burst from his hand with laser focus, lighting up the night sky for an instant as it screamed towards one creature.
It was a mistake.
The beam of light struck the disc and reflected off the many interlocking plates of the shiny surface, bouncing beams of burning white energy into the crowd. Screams erupted as people were burned, but they were not as loud as the screams of the poor man under the falling bird. It couldn’t reflect all the heat and the metal had melted.
Somewhere deep in his mind, Tad screamed in horror at his own actions. Outward he was still, his eyes wide and muscles trembling. This was yet more fuel to add to his nightmares for years to come should he manage to live that long.
Right now, he couldn’t afford to get caught in that horror. His activities over the last year had taught him that inaction was not an option in situations like this, or the fallout would be even worse. Falling back on another familiar trick, he found another group of spinning discs and he waved his hand at them, stirring up
the air and calling the wind.
Tony hadn’t been around when he got the call about the nightmare and Rodney was more use not merged with Tad right now, but he still had Thomas’ strength to help create a gale force wind that knocked over the people nearest to him before rushing over the heads of the crowd to intercept the metal discs.
For a moment Tad worried he wasn’t in time. Then, at the last second before they hit the crowd, they changed direction, no longer falling down but out, the spinning discs now spiralling as they were blown towards the castle wall and clattered against the stone in a shower of sparks.
That was six down... which left four of the first dive and twenty more coming down right after that.
He turned in time to see Growler knocking a skinny young man aside even as he used the man’s body as a platform to leap into the air and snatch one nightmare from the sky, almost like he was catching a frisbee. Icy horror washed through Tad at the thought of the blades cutting into his dog, but there was a spike of Dream that made his skin tingle and a flash of light as the nightmare overloaded. When Growler landed, he was holding the bloody body of a normal pigeon.
It was one life saved. It wasn’t enough.
New screams drowned out the rest, attesting to Tad’s failure. The urge to vomit was very real, but there were still glimmering shards of metal headed in his direction and he had to push the awful feelings of helplessness aside and save who he could. He pictured a bubble of dense air that was as large as he thought he could get away with, and threw himself against the door in his mind. His vision swam, and he fell to one knee as pain exploded through his head, but his barrier held for thirty feet in every direction.
It wasn’t enough.
Tens of people died and even more cried out as the metal discs cut into them. Then, to make things worse, the discs unlocked as feathers reformed, the heads unfolded, and soon there were metal pigeons with glowing red eyes again, flapping their wings hard as they fought gravity to climb to the sky, ready to start the process over once more.
