“When he freed me from the Institute.”
Adan stared at the Reeve in disbelief, trying to imagine what Nolan hoped to gain by concocting such an outrageous story.
“Illiud was a Welkin. He knew nothing about technology. How could he have freed you from the Institute?”
“Is anything too hard for Numinae?” Nolan lanced a predatory glare at him. For the first time since the guards had left, the proud ruler of Hull returned. “He caused Illiud to wake up while he was in the Institute. Darius was planning on wiping my mind because the remapping of Malthus’ son’s memories into my consciousness failed. I knew I wasn’t his son almost from the beginning. He may have erased my memories, but he could not erase the person behind the memories.”
This part did have some truth to it. Nolan had been implanted with the memories of Malthus’ son, Dane. Gavin had seen it in the chronotrace. But the part about Illiud had to be a fabrication. There was no way a primitive Welkin could have rescued Nolan from the Institute.
“Please forgive me if I find this hard to believe,” Adan said.
“Your doubts are perfectly understandable. Numinae’s ways are indeed mysterious, but I assure you that I am telling the truth.”
“But why reveal this now? And what does any of this have to do with Numinae. You still haven’t explained that.”
Nolan approached the edge of Adan’s bed and looked down upon him with the closest thing to desperation Adan had ever seen on his face.
“You may not approve of my methods, but when you are fighting a war the rules get re-written. You think I wanted to slaughter everyone in Oasis? You think I took pleasure in Will’s death? But the Collective had to be stopped. And Numinae sent Illiud to free me because he knew that I was the only one who could do it. Illiud said that Numinae had chosen me to enact his vengeance upon the Collective. He personally anointed me as the savior of the Werin, the instrument who would ‘restore his people back from their dispersion.’ Those were the exact words he used.”
“You’re lying,” Adan countered. He had had enough of Nolan’s games. It was time to call his bluff. “You found out about Illiud in the extractor. If you knew about the virus you could have found out about the prophecy as well. And then you made up this story just to, just to…” Adan fumbled for a reason, but nothing came.
Nolan latched onto his arm, all hints of the Reeve of Hull fleeing from his face. “Adan, you have to believe me. I had to do things the way I did because it was the only way. I am the only hope these people have against what the Collective is doing. It is them or us. They will slaughter every last one of the Werin and us as well. You’ve seen what they’re capable of. Maybe you resent me for manipulating you into fighting them, but ask yourself, would you have sacrificed yourself to destroy Oasis if I had asked you? No, you had to remain ignorant. You never would have sent the virus if you had. But none of that matters now, because the storm didn’t destroy all of them. And sending you again, along with Bryce and Nox didn’t stop them either. My scouts have spotted the Collective ships out in the Vast. I need to know what you know about their army and their plans. If you allow me access to your thoughts I promise that you and your friends can go.”
Adan sat in stunned silence at Nolan’s plea. He realized now that he knew next to nothing about the man before him. He half wondered if the real Nolan had been remapped and replaced with this newer version. It was highly unlikely, but at present, anything seemed possible.
So he knows an attack is coming. Should I help him defend this city? Should I tell him what I know? Would it even make any difference if I did?
Adan never got to answer those questions. Sirens roared from out in the hallway, shattering the silence inside the room. With the blast of noise, his thoughts scattered.
Nolan spun and faced the exit.
“They’re coming,” was all he said.
The awareness of what he meant hit Adan in the gut like another Wayman pinion.
“It’s the Collective, isn’t it? The attack has begun.”
Nolan glared back at him. The imposing, prideful Reeve stood before him once again.
“You should have told me,” he said. “Now all is lost. None of us will survive.”
Fifteen
From the Stars
Two Waymen guards burst into the room. Neither Sierra nor Tarn were with them. In fact, they weren’t the same guards from before.
“Reeve, the city is—”
“Yes, I know about the attack,” Nolan said. “Take this prisoner to the new cells. I don’t care which one. I never want to see him again.”
With that Nolan stormed from the room, leaving the guards to stare suspiciously at Adan, as if the attack on Hull were somehow his fault. In the back of his mind, irrationally, Adan wondered if somehow it actually was.
The guards escorted him out of the room and down the hallway. It was well made, rivaling the construction of the passages at the Institute. At the end of the hall they waited for a wide door to open. When it did, Adan saw the reason for the wait. It was an elevator. It took an inordinate amount of time for the doors to open again. As the elevator descended Adan worried about what would happen to Sierra and Tarn. Would the Collective level the city? Would they all die together in their prison cells? As long as those sirens kept blaring, he had little hope they would make it out of this alive.
At last the doors opened again and the Waymen herded him along a new corridor and through two more thick doors. On the other side was a hallway unlike any Adan had ever seen. It was lined with transparent walls allowing views into a series of identical rooms. Two more guards sat behind a transparent wall at the head of the passage, their dark eyes looking Adan up and down.
“Prisoners? Now?” asked one of them.
“Reeve’s orders,” replied one of Adan’s guards. The answer got a shake of the head, but the other Waymen waved him through.
Adan’s escorts moved him quickly along the new corridor. Inside each room they passed, he saw pairs of men sleeping on metal framed cots on opposite sides of the room, dressed in the same drab gray clothing Adan was wearing.
They stopped in front of a room occupied by a single man. One of the guards touched the clear wall facing them with the palm of his hand and the entire panel retracted into the ceiling. Then they shoved Adan inside and the panel whisked back into place.
The Waymen departed hurriedly without a word, leaving Adan to take in his cell. The chamber had no internal lighting, the only light coming from a lumin outside in the hallway. It was enough to make out a few details about the figure sleeping on one of the cots. He had gray, slightly thinning hair that went down to his shoulders, but he lay with his back towards Adan so that the particulars of his face remained hidden.
Adan sat down on the opposite bed. His strange encounter with Nolan still lingered in his mind. He wondered how much of what he had said was true or if he had been manipulating Adan in some way he had failed to see. But more than Nolan, his heart was heavy with thoughts of Sierra and Tarn. The most likely outcome was that they would be killed by the Collective forces. Or maybe they had been killed already. Adan had no reason to trust Nolan’s word.
He touched the transparent wall facing the hallway. It felt like some kind of plastic. It looked too thick to break, but he tapped on it a few times for good measure. It sounded just as solid as it looked.
“If you’re looking for a meal, they only serve it twice a day,” came a husky voice from behind him. The man on the bed rolled over and stared at him through bleary eyes. Rubbing his face, he tossed his legs over the side and sat up. His stubble-ridden face was reminiscent of char, flecked with black, white, and all shades in between.
Adan paused to consider the man’s comment. He couldn't remember the last time he ate, but his hunger was of little concern to him at the moment.
“I was just testing it to see how strong it was,” he said.
“Where are you from?” the man asked, scratching the bristly whiskers which
covered his face and neck. “You don’t look like you’re indigenous.”
Adan scratched his forehead. The man must have been referring to the Werin, but the term indigenous was not typically used. He didn’t look like he was part of the Werin either, now that Adan stopped to think about it.
“I don’t know,” Adan stated. “I have no memory. I don’t remember anything past a few days ago.”
“That freak Nolan get inside your head too?” the gray-haired man asked, scraping the sleep from his eyes and sizing Adan up. Despite his grogginess, there was a cunningness to his look.
“No, it was a group of scientists. Have you heard of a city called Oasis?” Adan asked. He didn’t know whether or not this man could be trusted, but at that moment he really didn’t have much choice. The man had been here longer than Adan and that meant he knew far more about Hull and this prison.
The man shook his head. “No. Is it one of the native camps?”
“It’s a city. Actually it was a city. It was destroyed by a storm. The scientists who erased my memory built it. It was even larger than Hull. It had hundreds of buildings, some of them fifty stories high.”
“Why would anyone build a city up on the surface? It’s not safe.” The man stood up and stretched, letting out a low groan.
“I’m not sure, actually. They did have atmos generators to protect them, but when those went down, the storm leveled almost everything. Have you been through a storm out in the open desert?”
The man grew agitated at Adan’s question. “Yes. I know what they’re like,” he snapped.
The sudden change in the stranger’s mood perplexed Adan.
“How long have you been here?” he asked, still trying to gauge how much the stranger knew about the prison.
“Don’t know,” the man muttered through a yawn and scratched the back of his head. “Nolan’s got me drugged up, playing with my mind. Everything’s all jumbled up. Dates, times, they’re hard for me to pin down. It all runs together.”
“Drugged? Do you remember anything at all?” Adan asked, staring at him with a newfound sense of pity. His story sounded eerily similar to Adan’s, only this man had been captured by Nolan instead of the Developers.
A distant look came into the stranger’s eyes. He no longer appeared fully present. Adan caught a glimpse of his thoughts. Dark tunnels flash through his mind, reminiscent of the ones in Manx Core. He walked through them carrying a rifle of some sort in his hands. He wore a helmet and a metal suit, but Adan somehow still knew it was him. Machinery and vehicles revved and hummed nearby, but Adan couldn’t see them.
The scene blurred. When it came back into focus, a million motes of bright white light sparkled overhead. Their beauty pierced Adan’s heart. It reminded him of the neophosphorous cavern in the Basin only this was much, much larger.
But the longer Adan contemplated the vision, the more he realized that something wasn’t right. The ceiling was different than what he had first thought, in fact, it wasn’t a ceiling at all. It was just black, empty space interspersed with points of light. But then, what held the lights up there? And how far away were they?
The ground stretched out perfectly smooth before them in every direction, lit by the faint lights above, giving it an eerie, wan cast. There were no walls to speak of. Adan realized that the man was no longer underground. No cavern could possibly be that large. He had to be outside, but where? There was no place like this anywhere in the Vast as far as he knew. There was no sand, no hills, no mountains. The terrain was featureless. And the sky had never looked that clear. The utter absence of clouds made Adan feel exposed despite the undeniable beauty of the expanse above.
“The stars…” the man mumbled. “I came from the stars. Kelm Brennan, escalon, sidereal scout class. Yes, that was my name. But what am I here for? Why did they send me?”
Kelm slumped back onto his bed as if he had been struck by a dizzy spell.
“Are you all right?” Adan asked. Something was definitely wrong with this stranger. With the sirens still whirring off in the distance, Adan was beginning to think he might be wasting his time trying to find out what this man knew.
Kelm brushed off the question. “I don’t know how I got here. But I know it took a long time. Maybe I’ve been sleeping the whole time. Maybe I’m just now waking up.”
“Where are you from, Kelm?” Adan asked. That was the biggest piece missing from Kelm’s puzzle, if only he could remember it.
The man rolled over to face the wall in response. Suddenly his whole body shook like he’d just woken up from a dream. He turned back to face Adan, blinking and looking around as if seeing the cell for the first time.
“You said something about stars. I’ve heard about those before. They’re up in the sky—beyond the clouds, right?”
The man’s head bobbed up and down, an excited look of recognition bursting onto his face.
“Yes, yes, that’s right. You’ve been there, too?”
“I’m afraid not—” Adan began, but the man rambled on.
“Are you sure? I could have sworn you were an escalon too, maybe even someone from my division.”
“No, I think you must have me confused with—wait, what are you talking about? Are you some sort of soldier?” The gun and metal suit in the man’s vision made it seem like he must have been at one point, but Adan didn’t know how far back that had been or whether it was just part of his imagination.
The man’s eyes opened wider and wider as the words spilled from his mouth.
“Yes, and you remember it too! I knew I’d seen you before. You were one of the first ones they sent.”
“What?” Now it was Adan’s turn to feel disoriented.
“Yes, they sent us out one by one,” Kelm said. “I remember now. Not many of us had the skill and training for such a long mission. They sent us out a few at a time and waited to hear back, waited for the signal, but it never came. We had to find them, we had to hurry….but why? And who? Who were they? Do you remember? What was the prime directive? What were we looking for?”
As a memorant, Adan sensed that Kelm’s mind was poised somewhere between ignorance and insanity. And yet the eagerness with which he spoke must have had some basis in reality, even if the details were all mixed up and out of place.
“Listen, I don’t know who sent you, or if anyone sent you at all. I told you, they erased my memory—” Adan said.
“But not mine.” Kelm rushed at Adan and grabbed him by the shoulders. “Nolan only confused it. And I do remember you. That mind jammer may have jumbled everything up, but I still have the pieces. And your face—I swear I’ve seen it before.”
Sixteen
The Lost Man
Adan pulled away from Kelm. Excitement washed over him, but a layer of doubt bubbled just beneath it. That this man claimed to know him seemed too incredible to be true. It was just as likely his claims were the product of a drugged and muddled mind. And yet Adan so wanted to believe that Kelm was speaking the truth.
“Kelm, are you sure about this?” Adan asked. “Perhaps you only imagined it.”
The insight brimming in Kelm’s eyes vanished as quickly as it came, replaced by desperation. “No, I…I remember…you were…” his voice trailed off as he wandered back over to his side of the room.
Adan felt a deep sense of pity for this man. He wondered if this is what Nolan did to all of his prisoners and whether he planned on using the same drugs on him if Hull survived the attack.
“Your face,” Kelm rambled on like a man fumbling for something he had lost in the dark. “I saw it once. I just…oh, you’re right, how can I be sure of anything? It’s all swirled together inside my head, like I’ve lived the lives of a hundred people instead of just one. I can’t tell which memories are my own.” Kelm slouched onto his bed and began to fiddle with his long hair, twisting it around his fingers.
Answers about Adan’s past, like his chances of getting out of this cell, seemed more distant than ever.
&nbs
p; The light out in the hallway flickered and Adan stood and returned to the transparent wall. This time he felt it tremble slightly.
Raised voices erupted at the end of the hall. He missed the first part of what they were saying, but pressing his ear to the wall he caught some of it.
“…a breach on the top floor. Report to the weapon vault immediately.” The voice sounded hollow, like it was coming from the sound system inside the building.
“But what about the prisoners?” asked one of the guards.
“One of you stay there. If it gets worse and we have to send for you, just release the gas and abandon the block,” came the answer from the sound system.
“Right,” was the guard’s response.
The prison’s main door whisked open, followed by the drumming of footsteps retreating in the distance. The prison walls shook again, visibly this time. A low rumble echoed through the building.
Kelm’s head jerked up. “What was that?”
“The building’s been damaged,” Adan said. He wasn’t sure whether or not he should tell Kelm about the attack.
“It’s happening again, isn’t it?” Kelm said, his expression wilder than ever.
“What? What’s happening?”
“Another purge.”
“What do you mean?” Adan asked as he got down on the floor to examine whether he could wedge his fingers under the wall. It was sealed tight.
“The Delegation. They poisoned the air, killed my…who did they kill? My family? Did I even have a family? I can’t remember. Oh, why did I survive and they didn’t? It’s because the commander he…did something to me. He…changed me. He changed all of us,” Kelm thrust his hands into his hair, tearing at his scalp as if he meant to pull out his memories by force.
“The Delegation? Kelm, you know about the Delegation?” Adan stared at him in shock, momentarily forgetting the danger they were in. Surely this had to be more than just the ravings of a broken mind.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 81
