The First

by A. Claire Everward

  He found Ahir streaming global media coverage on a small holoscreen on the dinner table before him, while drinking a cup of tea. The table was set for Adam, too, and he realized how famished he was. As if on cue, a smiling Remi brought a steaming coffee pot.

  “I try to keep up with what goes on in the world. Well, what the media tells the humans, that is, and how they react. I find it quite informative.” Ahir sipped his tea as the small images changed yet again. “It will be different for you, I suppose. You know their nuances from a different angle than I do.”

  Adam tilted his head slightly, savoring the strong taste of black coffee. “And then some. It's a must in my line of work.” He raised a brow. “My previous line of work, that is.”

  Ahir shut off the screen and looked at him. “How are you doing with that?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Your past.”

  Adam contemplated this quietly. “What I don’t get is how you all seem to accept it.”

  “We know something you don't.”

  “And what's that?”

  “We know you.”

  Adam was surprised at the bitterness that erupted in him. “Really? Who am I?”

  “You are the man who left the only family he had ever known, knowing that his actions would mean he could never go back, and in fact that the organization would go after him with all it had, just to save a woman he didn’t know, despite what he had been told about her. There was no future in siding with her, and yet you protected her and brought her here, to a different country, a different continent, no less. You left your life until that point and chose to follow the man you are.” Ahir stopped for a breath and then sighed. “How many times in the past have you helped someone, Adam, when the organization didn’t know? When you knew it could get you killed? How many lives have you saved?” Adam's expression confirmed to Ahir that he had hit the mark. He nodded. “While they were building the Kyle they wanted, Adam was there inside him. The child was growing into the man he is, the Protector, and no one could stop that.” His voice softened. “We are peaceful people, Adam, that is our nature. And the Protector, while he is first a warrior, he is also a good man. You are a good man.” He tapped his grandson's arm affectionately and commanded, “Now eat!”

  Adam smiled despite himself and did as he was told.

  “Speaking of the organization, Rolly updated me. What do you think we can expect from them?” Ahir asked.

  “Not much for a while. They'll either choose to watch Jennison for a time, in which case they will not allow him the freedom to act again if he even tries, or they'll remove him from office immediately, in which case the new director of the facility will take the time to clean it up. In fact, once Jennison is removed there is bound to be an organization-wide cleanup, that's what I would do.” Adam's eyes narrowed. “Either way, Richards is smart and highly calculated—there's a reason he heads the board. I'm betting he'll take the time to assess the impact of Jennison's actions and my and Aelia's escape on the organization. And he'll also want to consider the possible repercussions for the relations between the Firsts and the organization and our possible reaction to the attacks on us.” He nodded thoughtfully. “He'll stay away for the duration. What happens after that, that's a different story.”

  Ahir's face betrayed his worry. Adam noted how drawn the old man's face was, and felt a pang of concern. “Grandfather?” he said quietly, hoping the familiar tone would draw him out.

  “This mistake, the contact we established with the humans all these years ago, had cost us so much.” He sighed. “I'm sorry, Son. It looks like you and Aelia, you who have already paid so dearly for our mistake, will continue bearing the consequences. You, and our people.”

  “We can handle it.”

  Ahir was surprised at his confidence. But Adam only repeated, “Aelia and I, we can handle them. And we'll protect our people. We’ll protect the Firsts.”

  “Adam, if they haven't already figured out the truth after all that has happened, they will eventually. Look what they did when they thought you two were just symbols. What will they do if they realize the crucial role you actually play in our existence?” He shook his head. “They will come after you with all they have.”

  “Let them.”

  Aeterna was awake and already bustling with activity, and Adam found himself acknowledging its staff with every step he took. He realized this was the first time he'd walked among them this way, without the air of a man on a mission about him. He’d already made a name for himself, and he was after all the first Protector of a living Light in a long time, which accounted for their awe. But at the same time he was encountering the enthusiastic interest that came from the fact that he was, quite simply, the grandson of a man they all knew and cared for. Some had known his parents, some had even known him as a toddler, and for all of them he was a lost son returning home.

  He found Aelia walking beside the lake. A security detail was following her at a distance, and Adam indicated for them to leave, taking over. He fell in beside her and contemplated her. The night before he'd learned that he could use the connection between them to see what was going on inside her. It seemed that the Protector had more insight than he had thought into the Light's feelings, which would, he knew, only add to his ability to protect her. It made her even more vulnerable to him, he realized all too well, but he wasn't about to pull back from it, from her.

  That's how he knew that the weight of what had happened with the sniper had lifted somewhat, and that he'd done that. But something else was there, something that had already been there the night before but hadn't been the focus it was now.

  “I thought that was done with.”

  He heard, not just felt, the irritation. She didn’t like having a security detail following her. “All considering, I’d like to keep a detail around you for now. As an added precaution,” he said.

  “I'm constantly watched. Unless I'm in my rooms or with you.”

  “Yet you're out here.” It was a question, not a statement.

  “I like it here. I've never been in a place with so many trees and a lake and no endless buildings. It's almost peaceful.”

  Almost, but not quite, he thought, and an idea began forming in the back of his mind. He put it aside for now, waited to hear what was on her mind.

  “I've been reading a bit of what we have about the organization, beginning when the Council initiated first contact with it. It seems to be inclined toward thoroughly planned actions that are carried out with military precision. And yet Jennison . . .”

  Adam wondered where she was going with this, but he went along. “He always seemed to be a thorough man. In his actions, and in his words. He's the one who taught me that every action must be planned from start to end. Always plan contingencies, always be several steps ahead, always be prepared. Even when I was still a kid.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “I never thought . . . looking back, he was always teaching me. Training me. Planning ahead, wasn't he?” He shook his head. “Anyway, it wasn't until I began working closely with him that I saw the cracks. Not many of them, mind you. Just a tendency to panic, take rash action, when something went unexpectedly wrong, when he no longer had complete control over the situation.”

  He looked at her. “Thing is, Jennison is good. He didn't become the director of the organization's main facility, in charge of its top-tier operatives, by being mediocre. That place is crucial to the organization's survival, and it has been very well run for many years now—by Jennison. Even when he wasn't completely in control, he’s always managed to come out of it somehow, and no one ever really noticed. That's why he was never removed.” He paused. “More recently things had gotten worse but I'd managed to curb most of his panics, or at least mitigate the consequences, depending on whether I was away on a mission or not when he lost control. Still, between that and his recent actions”—he shook his head—“it is as if the Firsts finding you and my changing sides caused him to go off the deep end. And there’s no one the
re to stop him.”

  “If Richards removes him, the organization might revert back to its efficient self.” It fit what she'd read about it and what Adam had told her about Richards.

  “That's a fair assumption. Jennison will be replaced by someone more stable and the organization will clean up after him and attempt to resume its previous course.”

  “Come after us.”

  “I think by now you and I are major part of it, yes. The organization no longer has us, the Firsts do. So Jennison being gone won't mean that we're safer. It just means the organization is more likely to come after us more efficiently.”

  “What do you think they'll do?”

  Adam shook his head.

  They walked in silence. Finally, Aelia spoke. “Adam, we can't just sit and wait for what the organization will do. We need to act, prepare, do what we are here for. You were right last night, we are different and we'll be doing things our way.”

  He came to face her, forcing her to stop walking. She turned her eyes away, struggled how to put it, still working it out herself.

  “Not with me,” he said.

  She looked up at him, not understanding.

  “You don't have to search for the right words with me,” he said, and saw the wonder in her eyes, her wonder at him.

  She nodded. “I'm out here now because I wanted to let our people here see me. I wasn't entirely right to leave Aeterna as I did. I left, and it had an impact on them. I could feel the news traveling, felt the uncertainty, the fear.” She let out a breath. “They need me, Adam. They need us, Light and Protector. And we have to let them know that no matter what, we won’t leave them. But we also have to make them understand that they need to trust us to do what's right. They’ve lived with the stories, now they must understand that the stories do not make the Light and the Protector. It is we who make the stories. And they must know that whatever we do, we do it with them, and for them.”

  Her brow furrowed, and she looked at the great house. “I spoke with Neora and Ahir while you were gone, to understand more about what they do, what they have been for the Firsts, not in faith but in their everyday lives, in practical terms. And I understand now that by returning as we have, the two of us, we have destabilized the Keeper and Protector foundation our people have relied on for centuries, the foundation that has given them consistency and order in their daily lives, yet we are not able to give them an alternative one that is based on us, not yet. There is much we still have to contend with before we can. So we need to create something new, for them.”

  Adam marveled. Most people, with what she'd been through and the danger she was still in, would be paralyzed with fear and indecisiveness. But not her. She was resilient, and he could feel the determination in her, could feel her growing stronger, taking a direction. He thought of the irony. What might have taken so much longer was happening lightning fast because of the same actions that the organization took that had been meant to stop her. Instead of slowing down, she had hit the ground running.

  And she had obviously thought this through. “How do you want to do this?” he asked her.

  “We start with the Council. It's time they met us.”

  Rolly came to them, to the drawing room that was already becoming the meeting place of the two generations of the Firsts' leaders. They were all there, Neora and Ahir sitting, Aelia and Adam standing together nearby. Rolly stopped at the door, taking them all in. Now that was something you don't see every day, he marveled. A unique seam in the history of the Firsts.

  He wasn't sure who to acknowledge first, and Adam helped him by beginning, and getting straight to the point. “Rolly, how can we bring the Council here?”

  Rolly focused. “We can't. With the organization's recent actions and the truce void de facto, we can't vouch for their security.” He stopped. “But then you would know that, of course.”

  Adam confirmed with a brief nod. “So, how can we bring them here?” he repeated.

  Rolly sat down on the couch Ahir motioned him to. “Okay, what do you need them for? Practically speaking, that is.”

  “A meeting,” Adam said.

  “One meeting?”

  “Yes,” Neora said. “But we need them here, and all at the same time. Not simply a conference call, but a real meeting.”

  ‎“We could use holograms. We'll do this in the Council Hall, use mobile devices to construct holograms of them. You'll all be here, and the Council members will be holograms placed in their exact places around the table.”

  “That's here,” Adam said. “But what will they see? How do we get the same effect for them?”

  “Well, usually if the Keeper wants to speak to all of them we use the wall screens at every center, so that each Council member can see all the others, as well as the Keeper and the Protector.” Here he faltered. “I mean Mr. Kennard.” He stopped again, quite comically confused now. “You, Sir.” He turned to Ahir.

  “It's quite all right.” Ahir encouraged him on, and Rolly nodded gratefully and continued.

  “The thing is, if you want everyone in the meeting to feel as if they’re actually here, we can just use a simulated environment. You might know it as virtual reality,” he said to Adam and Aelia, “and we've had an advanced version of it for a while. We use varied applications of it for training, consequence assessment, technology trials and medicine, to name a few. All our centers have it, and it can easily be applied—all we have to do is have Aeterna take control of all the simulations in all the participating centers at once. We already have a Council Hall simulation, for security training purposes.” He was clearly enamored with the idea. “We’ll still run it in the real Council Hall, with some adjustments the simulation will play perfectly in it and it obviously already has the privacy Council meetings normally require. Yes, we’ll take out the conference table, take out everything in fact, leave the Council Hall empty and run the simulation. And we’ll need to have the respective centers make some adjustments too. Nothing major, if Aeterna controls the whole thing. If we do this the way I'm thinking, for the Council members it'll be as if they're actually here, in the Council Hall, with everyone else. It’ll work.”

  Adam looked at Neora and Ahir, and it was Neora who smiled. “These are your decisions now,” she said.

  He bowed his head in acknowledgment and turned to Aelia. She nodded once, and he turned to Rolly. “Let's do this.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Aelia and Adam spent the next hours learning about the Council, with Ahir as their teacher.

  “The Firsts are scattered all over the world,” he explained. “We are all the same, not divided like humans are, by borders or origins, or belief, obviously. But Firsts in different regions do live in different circumstances—different regional characteristics, different types of human neighbors and accordingly different degrees of involvement with them and security concerns, different community occupations, different needs. We have long ago learned that a good way to ensure everyone’s well-being is to maintain local councils that would know best how to cater to the needs of their own communities. Their members are regular members of the community, and their role is simply to make addressing issues that arise more efficient. There are no heads of local councils, no hierarchies, but every council does have a representative who participates in cross-community conferences and who, periodically, comes here, to Aeterna. These representatives form a central council, the Council of the Firsts, and I am its head.”

  “And you yourself don't represent a specific region?” Adam asked.

  “No. Aeterna does not constitute one of the regions, it is simply known as the seat of the Keeper and the Protector. I oversee the Council, and through it all locations the Firsts are in. And the security of all the Firsts, of course, this has always been the responsibility of the Protectors.” He paused and added, “And, first and foremost, I am the Keeper's right-hand.”

  “And her friend.” Aelia smiled.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that a pre
requisite of the Protector?” she asked, her smile widening.

  “No.” Ahir laughed. “I suppose not. But when two people spend so many years together, they get to know and trust each other. Understand each other. And it is more than that. When you are in positions such as ours, you find yourself necessarily isolated. No one can really understand what you are going through, and you cannot speak freely or voice concerns to the same people who look to you for answers. So this friendship in which nothing needs to be hidden becomes precious to you.”

  His smile had decades of memories behind it. “Neora and I, we got along from the very beginning. She was there when my son”—he turned to Adam—“your father, was born, when you were born, and when your parents were killed and you were taken. She was there beside me in my search for you, and was my only remaining comfort when your grandmother, my wife and companion of many years, passed away and I remained alone. She is my friend, and I am hers,” he said simply. For a long moment he remained deep in thought, then looked up at both of them as if suddenly remembering they were there.

  “Why is she alone?” Aelia's brow was furrowed.

  “I'm sorry?”

  “You were married, you had a son. Your grandson is sitting here. Why is Neora alone?” She looked at him, perturbed. “Ahir, were all the Keepers alone?”

  “Yes, that is how it has always been.”

  “Why?” The pain was evident in her voice.

  “She is a symbol of something huge, her role is . . .” His voice tapered off at the look in Aelia’s eyes. She wanted the truth. He nodded. “Because the Light was.”