By the time the raucous ride finally came to an end, Adan was standing in puddles of sweat. He let out a long exhalation as he placed his feet on solid ground once again.
The lev had stopped in front of an enormous, elongated building with a rounded roof. It was one of the few structures in the city which actually appeared finished. Two enormous metal doors, at least twice as tall as Adan and wide enough for five people to enter abreast, marked the entrance.
The Waymen steered Adan towards the building. After several moments of standing, the enormous doors swung open slowly, revealing a contingent of Waymen on the other side.
Of the six men in the party, four wore simple vests and, judging by the pinions strapped to their backs and the way they never took their eyes off Adan, were guarding the two men standing in the middle. One of the two was the Wayman who had interrogated Adan on the cruiser, his prominent purple scar shone even brighter in the light of day. The man who stood beside him did not look like a Wayman at all. He wore a full beard and had thick, dark hair that went down to his shoulders. He walked with a long metal staff set with a translucent spike on top. His beige robes were trimmed in gold. The clothes contrasted sharply with his eyes, which were as cold and gray as the metal walls surrounding the city.
This last man stepped forward, his arms sweeping wide.
“Welcome to Hull, Adan,” he said. His voice had a slightly melodic quality to it.
Adan stared at him in disbelief. “You know who I am?”
“It is my business to know what happens in the Vast,” the man said, “It is how I survive. But even I do not know everything. And one thing which I do not know is how you made it out of Oasis alive.”
This man not only knew about Oasis, but he knew that Adan had been there. How was that possible?
“What do you mean? What makes you think I was there?”
The man drew back into the shadows of the doorway. “Come to the control deck and we will talk there.” He turned and walked into the building.
The Waymen behind him gave Adan a shove before he even had time to follow. As he passed inside the well-built structure, the temperature dropped noticeably. The doors closed behind them on their own with a quiet click. Lumins lined the walls. Just inside the door, a Wayman was attaching a metal plate to the wall with self-drilling bolts. He tapped them with his finger and they sunk into the walls on their own. It was not anything approaching the technology of Oasis, but Adan could not understand how desert dwellers like the Waymen could be using such things. They feared and even hated technology, treating it with suspicion and superstition.
After making their way down an arched hallway, they arrived at another, smaller set of doors in the interior. These parted automatically as they approached. The passage beyond was lined with doors along both walls.
A wave of weakness sunk down Adan’s throat as they entered this new hallway. It looked just like the Institute and the Annex. What was going on? Were the scientists and the Waymen in league together? But then why were they fighting each other?
At the end of the hallway another set of double doors opened into a semi-circular chamber. They proceeded down a curved ramp until they reached the floor. At the bottom rested a long oval table surrounded by a dozen black, polymeric chairs.
“What is this place?” Adan asked “And who are you?” His clamps started itching his wrists like mad. He had to get out of this place.
“I am the Reeve of Hull, the largest, and most powerful of all the thrals in the Vast.” The man handed his staff to one of the guards and motioned for Adan to sit.
Adan took a chair and the Reeve sat down across from him. His slimy, sweaty garrick squelched in the soft chair.
The Wayman who had interrogated him on the cruiser sat in the chair next to the Reeve. The guards remained standing.
“But what is your name? It only seems fair that you tell me yours since you already know mine.” Adan asked, secretly trying to slip his hands out of the clamps under the table, hoping the sweat would help, but his hands were just too big.
The Reeve gave him a nod. “You may call me Nolan if you like.” He gestured to the man seated next to him. “And this is Mok, the high sunder.”
The Wayman gave Adan a nod, but Adan did not return it. He had known another Wayman who held the rank of sunder. If this man was anything like him, he had little desire to afford him any kind of respect.
“You’d best watch yourself around the Reeve,” Mok warned. “Like I told you on the ship, you can’t hide anything from him. He sees it all.”
Adan ignored the comment. The Waymen were a superstitious lot. This was just naive boasting or an idle threat. But there was something unusual about Nolan, that much was obvious. Was he from Oasis? He certainly didn’t look like a Wayman.
“So you said you’d talk to me about what’s going on.” Adan said.
“First, I want you to tell me how you survived,” Nolan replied.
“I—but I still don’t understand how you seem to know so much about me.” This conversation was starting to feel like Adan was back in Oasis, being asked questions that had some undisclosed purpose. Something in Nolan’s words told Adan he was not meant to survive what had happened in Oasis.
“You are in no position to be looking for answers,” Nolan said, his manner turning brisk. “I, however, am. Now tell me what happened. Everyone in Oasis should have been killed, and yet it seems that is not the case.”
Mok’s words echoed back through Adan’s mind: you can’t hide anything from him…Suddenly Adan remembered his own abilities as a memorant. Was Nolan one as well? He had to find out.
Recalling Gavin’s lessons, Adan stared into the Reeve’s face, but found it hard to concentrate with the Waymen all staring at him. Nolan gazed back at him, his face as expressionless as the canvas of a Wayman tent. There was nothing there for Adan to latch onto. Nolan’s mind was blank.
“You know about Will, don’t you?” Adan blurted out in a panic. He had no idea where the question came from. It simply popped into his mind out of desperation.
The corners of Nolan’s lips crept upwards in a knowing smile. “Yes, I know about your friend. I know about the virus, about the attack, about everything—except what went wrong. That is what you’re here to tell me.”
Adan’s whole body tingled with foreboding. “You knew what Will had planned?”
“Tell me what happened in Oasis,” Nolan demanded.
Adan gripped the seat of his chair with sweat-greased fingers, as if Nolan’s words were threatening to knock him out of it.
The Reeve’s presence seemed to fade into the background. The events in Oasis came rushing back: the whisper cannon, the somatarchs, the remin fluid, the truth about the virus. But of all the terrible things he had experienced there, the image of his dying friend gripped him the most. Will’s words blazed through his mind, “It wasn’t my idea.”
Adan’s eyes twitched as Nolan came back into focus, sitting in the chair across from him. Was this the person who had planned the attack on Oasis? If Nolan had been responsible for sending him to his death, now more than ever Adan knew he was not safe here; he had to leave this place, and he had to leave now.
“Why should I tell you anything? I don’t even know who you are,” Adan said, stalling.
“Perhaps you don’t remember me, but we have met before,” Nolan replied, his voice rising promisingly, as if he had a secret to share. “In fact, there are some things I could tell you about yourself that you would find rather interesting, if I were so inclined.”
Adan sensed Nolan was toying with him, that this whole interrogation was a ruse. It was the Institute all over again, questions upon questions, and just like the scientists, what Nolan really wanted to know had nothing to do with what he was asking.
“Where is the man who took Will’s extractor?” Adan demanded, but the moment he said it, he wondered if it had been a mistake, if he was letting on too much.
“So you’ve been back to th
e compound. If you expect to find who you’re looking for here, I’m afraid you’re too late. He left several days ago. He’s back in Oasis by now.” The look of self-satisfaction on Nolan’s face deepened, as if Adan’s attempts to avoid telling him what he knew were what Nolan actually wanted. “There, I’ve told you something,” he said, “now it’s your turn to answer my question. Why are the somatarchs roaming freely over the Vast? Why wasn’t Oasis destroyed?”
Something in Nolan’s voice triggered more memories of Oasis. They came swirling in, swarming his mind whether Adan wanted them there or not, like a desert storm pushing sand inside his clothing and there was nothing he could do to keep it out. His mind hurtled back to Oasis. He found himself in the wreckage of the Institute. The leader of the Waymen was screaming for his death. He watched Sparc’s body disappear with a whisper from Will’s oscillathe. Then a terrible pain pierced his heart as a pinion flew from Nox’s hands into the belly of his friend.
It was one of the curses of the bioseine and his latent memorant abilities that he could remember everything in perfect detail. The memories were so vivid it felt as if they were happening all over again. The clouds swirled high overhead, the storm gathering strength until it could return and finish off the city. He looked down and there was Will in his arms. The light in his eyes had gone out.
It wasn’t my idea, the words kept echoing in Adan’s mind over and over again.
“You sent Will to Oasis,” Adan said at last, certain that it had to be true. “It was your plan.”
Nolan nodded, his eyes fixed on Adan. That little gesture was like the opening of a latch inside Adan’s mind. Little by little things began to fall into place.
“The Waymen—you sent them as well, or you had something to do with it. I saw the aftermath of the battle. Hundreds died, maybe thousands. Did you know about that, too?”
“That part, at least, was expected. The promise of power can be an effective motivator. But you still haven’t answered my question. What I want to know is how the plan failed. Did the Developers stop you? Or did you find out about the virus before you got to the Annex?”
Adan locked eyes with the Wayman leader. Nolan’s question was too close to the truth to have been a guess.
“Yes, I’m a memorant as well,” came Nolan’s thoughts into Adan’s mind. “And apparently more skilled at the art than you.”
Adan attempted to sever their bioseine connection, but there was nothing to sever. He wasn’t sure how Nolan had gotten inside his mind, but he knew that he had to get him out. He averted his gaze and closed his eyes.
“So Gavin was your teacher, then?” Nolan continued.
Panic gripped Adan. He hadn’t even been thinking about Gavin. How was this man inside his head?
“Apparently, he didn’t tell you how to force yourself inside someone else’s thoughts. Or perhaps he didn’t want you to know that.”
Adan leapt up from his chair. He dashed towards the exit ramp, but the guards were on him in a moment. They wrestled him back into his seat and two of them remained standing on either side of him.
“I told you,” Mok said, shaking his head, “You can’t hide anything from the Reeve of Hull.”
Seven
Friends and Enemies
Adan now realized that Nolan’s mind had been pressing against his mind the entire time. And once inside, Nolan was not going to leave until he had the information he wanted.
Adan tried to cloud his thoughts, the way he might when someone was connected to his mind via the bioseine, but found there was always some part that escaped. He couldn’t catch hold of it long enough to keep it hidden.
And then, without knowing how it happened, his mind slipped free once again.
“I should have suspected it was Gavin who stopped you,” Nolan said, “It was his virus, after all.” He turned to Mok. “Are you certain this was the only survivor from the wreck?”
“We didn’t find anyone else,” Mok said. “But then again, we had our hands full scrapping with those gear-heads. They might have got him first.”
Nolan gave him a look of displeasure. “Ready the ballasts. Take half the fleet, as many men as you can spare. This man’s friend knows a great deal about our enemies. If we can capture him, it might shift the wind in our favor.”
“I shall do all that is in my power, oh Reeve.” Mok rose and bowed low. He then left the way they’d come in.
“You know, Adan,” Nolan said, leaning forward with his elbows on the table, “you and I have something in common. The Developers took my past from me as well.”
“Do you mean you were part of the Remapping Initiative?” Adan asked. He wasn’t sure he could trust anything this man said, but it certainly would explain the fact that Nolan was a memorant.
“Oh, no. I was before that. I suppose in some way I was merely a failed attempt for what they ended up doing with the remapping. But for both of us, the result was the same.”
“But if you lost your memories, there may be a way of getting them back,” Adan said tentatively. He wasn’t sure he should try to help this man. He was clearly dangerous. But if Adan could somehow bargain with him, maybe Nolan would let him go. “Gavin said there was a place called the Repository in Oasis and that all the memories of everyone, even those from the Remapping Initiative were kept there.”
“We may have one thing in common, but not everything.” Nolan’s voice had a sharpness to it which severed Adan’s slim hopes. “I have learned to accept my fate. You would do well to do the same.”
I’d say we have nothing in common, Adan thought to himself, wondering if Nolan was still reading his thoughts. “So why did you send Will to destroy Oasis? That doesn’t sound like you’re accepting your fate.”
“You think I’m motivated by revenge? Have you considered that perhaps I seek to destroy them for other reasons? There is such a thing as justice in this world, Adan. Have you ever thought of that?”
“For most people, justice is just another word for revenge. I don’t think you’re interested in real justice.” Adan felt backed into a corner, but his desperation gave him surprising courage. “I think you wanted Oasis for yourself, that’s why you tried the virus.”
Nolan chuckled quietly to himself.
“You have promise, Adan. And you’ve been helpful to me in more ways than you know. Normally, I would kill you since I already have what I need from you, but you may yet prove useful to me.”
Adan glared at his adversary across the table. “I’ll never help you. You sent me to my death.”
“There are worse things than death,” Nolan said.
Adan had no idea what Nolan meant by the remark, but he didn’t care. “Whatever you want, I won’t do it.”
Nolan leaned his chin on his hand and regarded Adan thoughtfully, but it was a sleepy sort of attention, as if he had grown tired of the conversation. “You’ve already done what I wanted once before. There are many ways to get someone to do something, especially if you know what they want. You simply have to make it so that the thing you want and the thing they want are the same thing.”
Adan tried to read more deeply into the expression on Nolan’s face. The Reeve was not the only one who could read people’s thoughts, after all. But Nolan’s eyes stared back into his in a lazy, dream-like way and Adan could get nothing.
“Who are you, really?” Adan asked, resorting to a more direct approach. “Waymen don’t use technology like this. And they certainly don’t have memorants or know as much about Oasis as you do.”
“This is Thral Hull,” Nolan replied with his thoughts. “Under my leadership, the Waymen have learned to cast off some of their superstitions, though not to the degree that it would be wise to speak of these matters openly.”
“Are you afraid of what would happen if you told them the truth? Are you afraid they wouldn’t follow you if they knew you were just an experiment like me?”
“They will still be following me long after I’m done with you,” Nolan shot back.
The Reeve motioned to the guards who grabbed Adan and yanked him out of his chair.
“The interrogation is over,” Nolan declared. “Take this prisoner to the pits so that he can have some time to think. But first see that he’s fed. I don’t want him dying on me.” He paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him. “In fact, take him to the dispensary on your way.”
“You will serve me, whether you choose to or not,” came Nolan’s last thought as they dragged Adan from the room.
Outside the building, the Waymen loaded Adan onto another lev. The ship shuddered into motion and began zigzagging its way through the city on another tilting, jostling ride. By the time Adan dared open his eyes, he was in a section of the city he had not seen before. It was a wide open space filled with people and a few small tents scattered here and there. Almost everyone present was engaged in some form of manual labor. Some mended or washed clothes or tent fabric while others tinkered with various rundown machines.
Located more or less in the middle of the sprawling bustle was a tent that was easily ten times larger than any of the others. It was towards this structure that Adan’s lev made its way.
A long line of people stretched out in front of the opening, waiting to get in. The line doubled back and forth in random fashion, winding its way through the other workers like a giant scribble. The tent looked like it would fit at least a hundred people, perhaps more. Set up near the entrance was a long metal table with four large bowls on top of it. Four women were serving the contents of the bowls to the people in line. Once the recipients received their portion, they passed inside the tent.
The lev pushed its way through the crowd and straight to the front of the line, sending the masses scurrying. There had been a sort of subdued chatter as they approached, but it died away completely with their arrival.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 41
