The First

by A. Claire Everward

  But Adam could do little more than speculate on what would happen now. Obviously from the start he'd been given only a small part of the picture by the organization, and even that had been a lie. And so all he could do was rely on what he knew about the organization and the people who were behind it, and on what they had made him, and use it all to do all it took to protect those around him.

  A little less than two hours later Adam was having breakfast with Ahir, Neora and Aelia in the main dining room of what was now his and his grandfather’s wing of the great house. Neora and Ahir were at the table with him, tea cups before them—his was coffee—and Remi and Sonea were clearing the dishes. Aelia stood up yet again and walked to the window, as she had done several times already, to look outside. There were many more people out there now. She watched them, subconsciously tuning herself to them.

  “All those people out there . . .”

  “They need you.”

  Aelia started, realizing that she had spoken her thoughts out loud, that the three at the table were listening.

  Neora's eyes clouded, and once again Aelia felt sadness, a bottomless, timeless sadness from her. She glanced at Adam and saw him looking at Neora too, frowning. Ahir put his hand on his old friend's.

  “We lost so much.” Neora shook her head. “We used to be so alive, so hopeful, always looking to the future. We created, we nurtured, we believed. And when the Light left us, we lost our life force. It was still there at the beginning, the first, second, tenth century after you left us, and later, too. We continued proud, confident. We had a rich past, strong foundations to stand on. We stood for so much, were certain of who we were. We had what the Light had taught us and kept it alive with flourish, because we were certain, so certain that you would return to stand among us, guide us. Protect us. But you did not return. This time, you did not return to us.”

  Aelia's eyes filled with tears at the pain in the old woman's voice, the pain of the Firsts.

  “I and the Keepers before me, we tried to help, to be there for them, keep their hope alive, but it has gotten more and more difficult with each century. And we ourselves, the Keepers—and the Protectors—we ourselves needed you, and needed to continue believing, for ourselves as well as for our people, that you would return. But you did not and by then there was no one who had lived at the same time as the Light, who remembered how it felt when the Light walked among us. There hasn't been someone like that for so long now, and every year, every single year since I became Keeper, the Council would convene and I would be given the same news, always the same news as too many before me have. The silence of your absence. I thought I too would eventually pass without you coming back, but I simply could not stop believing. I haven’t even allowed them to choose the one who will replace me yet, do you know? I knew you had to come back, you simply had to. Our people are tired, Aelia, they are at their wits’ end. And this world, so much is happening, so much bad, and we are so few, and underneath it all our people, your people, are crumbling in their struggle to keep it all alive, to keep themselves alive. We need you, you see. We need you so much—”

  Her voice broke, and Aelia watched her, wanting, needing to take the old Keeper's pain away, and she tried to find within her the way to help, she just had to do something—

  Then so be it, she thought, let it be. Please, show me how to help them, how to let it be.

  She turned back to the window. Outside, people stood in the distance, speaking to one another, throwing looks at the great house. She closed her eyes. The Light. First of the Firsts. Neora was talking as if she was nothing short of amazing, and what those people out there were calling for, awaiting, what they were thinking that she was, that was so much beyond her. What she felt within her, what she was, it wasn't that, it wasn't anywhere close. She was just Aelia. Aelia with that subtle, prodding feeling inside her that was there, but it was a shadow, just a shadow. It wasn't enough. They needed her, and she wanted, needed so much to help them and she wasn't enough.

  She noticed the silence behind her and turned. They were all looking at her. Adam stood up, concerned.

  “I . . .” She faltered, unsure of herself, felt she was letting them down. “I'm sorry, I can’t . . .” She ran out.

  Adam moved to go after her, and Neora touched his arm to restrain him. “Adam, let her go.”

  Adam stopped but continued to look toward the door.

  “Let her go. She needs to do this herself.”

  “Do what?” Adam looked down at Neora, not understanding.

  “Know who she is. Become what she is,” the old woman said, a force to her voice. “You know. You’ve seen it, you’ve felt it. But she doesn’t believe it yet, she doesn’t believe it could possibly be her.”

  Adam's mind went back to the conversation he had with Aelia the night before. He was about to answer Neora when a commotion sounded outside, the door crashed open and Rolly burst into the room, his face ashen.

  “There's been an attack.” He shook his head incredulously. “Rome . . . there was an explosion in the cathedral.”

  Ahir stood up, the chair he was sitting on nearly falling over. “Our people?”

  “We're still checking. Our systems in the underground complex registered the blast data, but it just happened, so we don’t have anything else yet. I've already had contact with Denole, he says the explosion was outside our perimeter.”

  “Do they need anything?” Ahir asked.

  “Our people in the relevant places are already on the move. We're also waiting for media coverage, it should tell us if we're compromised.” Rolly frowned. “Denole reports possible casualties.” He turned and walked back to the door, where Adam was already waiting and security details were standing ready to take position and protect their leaders once again, Aeterna having reinitiated a lockdown.

  Rolly updated Adam and Ahir on the way to Aeterna's control center. A short while before, what seemed to be a deliberately placed charge exploded immediately outside the rear of the cathedral's left wall. Luckily there were very few tourists around, because the place hadn't opened yet for visits. At that hour only the cathedral personnel and its clergy were there, and any Firsts that were among them were all inside. The Firsts' hidden complex under the cathedral was already fully active at that hour.

  The three came to a stop before the curved screen. Its entire main section showed the inside of the Firsts' underground center, which seemed unaffected, the area immediately outside the wall where the explosion hit, the inside of the cathedral, and the entire cathedral from all sides and above, at a growing distance to allow for more coverage of the surrounding streets. The devastation, in and out, was clear, and rescue and law enforcement forces were still arriving. Both inside the cathedral and outside it, paramedics were already treating injured and dazed people.

  On Adam's right, a section of the wall he had thought was just that, a wall, shimmered and then broke into a matrix comprising news screens as media worldwide began breaking into newscasts, reporting the explosion at the prominent religious and tourist site. He couldn't hear what they were saying, but work stations facing the screens had people listening to every word being said, as well as to the chatter of police and rescue forces in the area. On his left, others were intent solely on data coming in from Aeterna’s extensive security layout. Some subscreens were focused only on the great house, and several of the watchers' individual screens, he saw, were dedicated to the part of the house Aelia and the Keeper were in. Yet others focused on the people outside on Aeterna's grounds. Rolly and his people were leaving nothing to chance and had obviously implemented all the safeguards Adam himself had suggested. And he was impressed with the professional calm at the control center. There were many more people here now than before, and the activity was substantially heightened, yet the noise level was hushed and there was no sense of panic.

  “Our complex under the cathedral, our Rome center, is of course in lockdown,” Rolly said for Adam's benefit. “It is safely located far un
der the multiple basement floors of the main structure. The moment the blast was registered, access to and from the complex was automatically sealed on all sides, and our people were cut off from the outside. The only remaining access is through an underground tunnel to the secondary site. We have designated personnel among the humans, in the cathedral and among the authorities and the rescue forces, so we have a significant presence there. We are safe.”

  Adam turned to him, frowning. He didn't know anything yet about the Firsts' global security—he didn't know anything about the Firsts themselves yet, come to think of it—but in his experience there was no such thing as safe. Certainly not at a bombing site.

  Rolly nodded and spoke quietly to the supervisor overseeing the room. She acknowledged and gave a quiet order, and the satellite view looking down at the cathedral from above distanced itself quickly, until the cathedral was invisible within the city around it. “You're looking at continuous satellite coverage,” Rolly said. “That's in addition to technological and other measures applied in and around the cathedral in general and in our underground complex in particular, which are unaffected by any system installed by humans around them, nor are they detectable by any means currently in existence. Our sensors weren't even close to incurring damage throughout the entire event, they just recorded it. And, most important, each and every one of our people in Rome is already accounted for and is monitored. We are,” he added somberly, “used to living alongside humans without being discovered, regardless of what happens.”

  “Still, the attack wasn't identified in progress.”

  “True. But who thought they would attack their own to get to us? This is a prominent cathedral. A holy place for the humans, with humans inside and around it at all times.”

  “We'll have to reassess our security.” Ahir's frown was deep with worry. This was a new escalation.

  Adam forced himself to take a mental step back. Not because he felt better about the safety of the Firsts, but because he realized he didn’t know enough for his experience to lock on to what should and shouldn't be done when it came to them. He knew all about the reality of the humans he'd lived among all his life, and nothing about the reality of this hidden species he'd just met.

  “So nothing like this ever happened before?” he asked.

  Rolly shook his head. “There has never been an intentional attack aimed specifically at the Firsts, assuming that's what it was.”

  “It was.”

  Ahir and Rolly turned to him. Adam’s eyes remained focused on the screen, his eyes cold. He was sure of it. This had all the markings of panic, specifically Jennison's. And the timing only confirmed it. He knew the man. Although Jennison was the very vision of professionalism, of careful planning—and Adam's own carefully planned life was the best evidence of that—he was, nonetheless, prone to the occasional rash decision. Adam recalled times when he had had to pull Jennison back from a decision that would have led to premature action that would have impeded a mission, and then put a lid on it to hide the fact that it was ever even considered. He doubted more than a handful in the organization knew of this side of Jennison. But Jennison was his godfather, and he had let his guard down around Adam. Adam knew him better than most.

  And yes, this had the markings of Jennison's rash decisions, an action taken too quickly, with too little planning, in a rage. To make a point.

  Rolly was still watching him. “Jennison? What's he doing? Starting a war?”

  “No. It’s still only just the organization reacting, and I don’t think it's even that, I think it's just him.” Adam was thinking out loud. “It's a message for the Firsts, and for me. A warning to refrain from reacting to his recent actions. Which will allow him to regroup, deal with the internal implications of the failure of his plan, maybe cover up. Or more likely create the story he wants, maybe use it to mobilize the organization. Then come after us again.”

  “You think we should expect something here?” Rolly asked.

  It was Ahir who answered. “No, not now. Certainly not after this. They would know that an attack on Aeterna would not pass quietly, especially now that we know what they did to our Light and the Protector in an attempt to destroy us. And if by chance they did succeed in such an attack, they wouldn’t be able to stop there. They would have to attack Firsts everywhere, and you don’t do that lightly. Not even Jennison. That's the organization risking exposing itself and us, and starting a war.”

  Adam concurred. He indicated the bombing site on the screen, awash with police and red ambulance lights. “And if Jennison would have thought to attack Aeterna, he wouldn't have bombed another site first. Now he no longer has the element of surprise going for him, and he doesn't need people to start asking why someone is bombing sites all over Italy.” He turned to Rolly. “Just the same, I assume you increased security on Firsts everywhere, not just here?”

  Rolly confirmed.

  “Good. I'm not that sure how much in control of himself Jennison is right now, and even if he can't send an army, he could still try another Semner on lower-ranking targets elsewhere. To create fear.”

  The media screen was now packed, the entire world was reporting. None were showing footage from the site itself yet. Adam imagined it would take time to get news vans through the emergency vehicles blocking the ancient city's streets.

  Denole, the head of defense and security of the Rome center, was available after some time to report to them. He sent them footage from the Firsts' systems that showed the entire sequence of events, beginning some time before the explosion. They watched it on the holoscreen of the supervisor’s station, while Denole watched it along with them in his own office under the cathedral.

  “There,” he said when the section of the footage he was looking for appeared. The couple on the screen approached the cathedral from the piazza behind it, seemingly like the many other tourists who normally frequented the place. The hour might have been somewhat early, but it wasn't entirely out of the ordinary, certainly not so that they would stand out. They spoke to each other and laughed, looking up at the cathedral, walking around it, as if they were just a couple of sightseers.

  Here the view changed. “They knew there were no security cameras at this angle, cathedral security didn't think it was needed,” Denole said. “But they didn't know about our security.”

  On the screen, the two, apparently assuming they were not being observed, approached a semi-hidden door in the cathedral’s side wall, to the rear. As they did so their demeanor changed. While the woman was keeping an eye out, the man crouched, lay his bag beside the wall and adjusted something inside. He then turned his attention to the door and was trying to open it with a set of tools he had taken from his pocket when the charge exploded. As the dust settled the devastation was clear. The view switched to the inside of the cathedral, showed it shake, heavy stones fall from above along with a part of an arch. People on the ground were running to all sides, trying to avoid them and the broken panels showering them, the blast having blown precious mosaics apart.

  “The door he was trying for leads to the cathedral’s first basement level, but an inner door at that level opens to an elevator to us. We wouldn't normally think there was any connection to us, since we do not exist as far as anyone is concerned, but with the Light back and the recent attempts on Her life, and the message we intercepted that was sent by our systems here soon after Mr. Kennard identified Her, we have to take this possibility into account. I don't know what made them think they would manage to get to us, but then they don’t seem to have been very well prepared. And that explosive, the way it just went off . . .”

  “Could you go back before the explosion, zoom in on their faces?” Adam asked Rolly, who did as he asked. Adam frowned at the realization that he'd been right.

  “You know them, Sir?” Denole asked.

  “Never seen her, but the guy, he's one of the soldiers at the organization's Italy office. I've met him. He's not even one of their high-level operatives, just a soldi
er for local missions.” This added to Adam’s assumption that this was a hasty job ordered by Jennison. He was authorized to mobilize people everywhere, but using an operative at Adam's level, and from outside the facility, would require him to report to the heads of the organization, so he would have had no choice but to use lower-level operatives. Who could, on the upside, be more easily intimidated to obey without question.

  Rolly nodded appreciatively. Having a former operative of the organization here was proving useful. He called over one of his people and issued some orders to be passed to all other centers, then directed him to set up briefing calls for Ahir and him with all heads of defense and security as soon as possible.

  Adam's eyes were on the bombing site views on the control center screen. These are my people out there, my people who are being attacked, the realization dawned on him. “What do we do to help our people in Rome?” he asked.

  Rolly glanced at him quizzically. “We watch and wait. Those under the cathedral will lie low, and those around it will do their job and take care of what's needed. If need be, the complex can be evacuated to the secondary site through a secure passage.”

  Adam nodded, his frustration mounting. He needed to know more.

  He didn't see Rolly exchange a look with Ahir, nor the smile that passed on Ahir's face. The latter nodded his confirmation and Rolly spoke. “You’re welcome to join the conference calls with the defense and security heads of our worldwide communities, it would be a good time to make the introductions,” he said to Adam as they turned to leave the control center. “And anything you've got to say, we'll listen.”

  “I just got here, I don't know enough. My interference with security outside Aeterna could risk people.” Adam stopped and turned to Rolly. “And you don't answer to me. You answer to my grandfather.”

  “I answer to you both, and so do all heads of defense and security. Mr. Kennard here is the head of the Council and we all answer to him. But you are the Protector now. You are the only authority on the protection of the First and the final authority on the protection of all the Firsts.”