Awakened

by C. Steven Manley

  “Okay, that makes sense, I guess. So, Silversky?”

  “The only place that I have an emotional memory of there is Olivia’s office from the night we…” she paused to look for the right word.

  “I’d go with ‘changed,’” Israel said.

  “Yeah, changed. The night we changed.”

  Israel nodded. “And the whole point of all this is to not suddenly appear in her office.”

  “Right. So help me think of another spot that’s close to but not in the house.”

  Israel thought it over. “What about that spot where you offered to…y’know.”

  Erin looked at him and smiled. “Oh, that’s cute. You think turning me down was emotionally traumatic for me. Sorry, playa, but you’re not all that. Besides, that’s probably too close to the house.”

  Israel thought it over for a minute and then bounced the heel of his hand off his forehead. “Matt’s funeral. All those people grieving, Stone’s little speech, the looks we kept getting- surely there’s something there you can latch on to.”

  Erin nodded. “I should have thought of that. It’s not that far from the mansion. We could go overland until we get where we need to be to see Allison at the window. Okay, give me a second.”

  She closed her eyes and her brow furrowed as she concentrated. After a time, she held out her hand to Israel without speaking. He took it and they vanished.

  They reappeared not only in The Sentry Group memorial building, but right in front of the alcove where Matthew Tucker’s ashes were interned. The building was dark and cool. Moonlight glowed through skylights and cast shadows that stretched in varying angles. Tiny, gas-fueled flames marked each memorial and made the shadows dance as they flickered. The silence was absolute until Israel broke it.

  “Nice,” he said. “Right on target.”

  Erin’s only reply was a quick nod. She stared up at the silver plaque that marked Matt’s memorial:

  Herein lies

  Matthew James Tucker.

  He walked through darkness so others

  would not have to.

  Erin reached out and touched it lightly. “He didn’t even know us but, he died saving us,” she said.

  Israel studied the plaque as well. “Yeah. That was the life he chose, protecting people from- hell, I’m not entirely sure what even now. Definitely the Progeny and guys like the Screeds. Who knows what else? Like I said before, we’re playing in the deep end of the grownup pool.”

  “I never knew anyone who would choose something like that,” she said, “not in the real world. I thought guys like him only existed in movies.”

  Israel nodded. “I get that,” he said. “Thing is, there’s a whole lot more good people than bad, I think. You just didn’t get a chance to see any of them.”

  “Until I met you,” Erin said. “Thanks for not leaving me behind back in Oceanside. I mean that.”

  Israel just nodded. The silence closed over them again for a moment.

  “The thing that amazes me,” he said, “is that you thought people like that only existed in movies, yet you were one of them the whole time.”

  Erin gave him a sarcastic laugh. “No, Izzy, I was not. I told you.”

  “You told me about shit that was done to you, Erin, choices that were made for you. You told me about a lifetime of that. The minute you got the power to make your own choices, though, what did you do? You saved a bunch of kids from some very, very bad people.”

  “Among other things,” she whispered with a choked sob.

  Israel said nothing for a time. Then,“I didn’t know your brother. From what you’ve told me, I’m glad for that. I’ve gotten to know you, though, and if I had to choose one of you to be in the world, I’d pick you every single time. The choices are all yours now and you’ve chosen to be here, doing this.” He reached up and put his fingers next to hers on the plaque. “In my book, that makes you a whole lot like this guy.”

  Israel watched as a single tear broke free and rolled down her cheek. She took her hand off the plaque and turned her back to him. When she turned back she said, “Enough of this soap opera shit. Let’s go see Warburton.”

  Israel nodded and they walked to the door.

  It took a few minutes to get their bearings, but it wasn’t long before they were kneeling in the grass at the base of a small hill that overlooked the Silversky mansion. From here, the true enormity of the structure struck Israel. Even when he’d been staying there, he had never truly appreciated the sheer size of the place.

  The main house reminded him of a starburst design cut in half: Four wings, two short and two longer, radiated out from a central hall that he knew from experience was easily fifty feet tall. The two longer arms ended in smaller wings that crossed the larger at a right angle. At the end of each of these was a large parking area with half a dozen or so vehicles in each. The mansion was lit up by a score of exterior flood and walkway lights. Lights glowed from within all over the house and Israel could see several guards patrolling the grounds.

  “You sure you know which window?” he asked.

  “Yeah, it’s that one,” Erin said with a quick gesture toward the house and its hundred or so windows.

  “Thank you, that helps loads.”

  “Relax, Izzy,” she said. “I spent a couple of hours in that office this morning looking out that window. I’ve got this.”

  Another few minutes passed when Erin suddenly stood up and said, “There it is.”

  Israel stood up as well and said, “Where? I didn’t-”

  He felt Erin grab his arm.

  “-see it,” he finished, suddenly aware that Olivia Warburton was facing him from behind her desk. Stone was next to her, a kind of cautious smile on his bearded face. Michelle and Allison stood next to the window that Erin had been watching and were pulling the heavy drapes closed. Israel noticed that the furniture seemed to have been moved away from the center of the room- in anticipation of their arrival, he supposed -but then saw a large dinner cart filled with covered silver trays sitting in the spot he remembered one of the chairs being.

  “Welcome back, Mr. Trent,” Warburton said. “You’ve had us a bit worried.”

  “Yeah, I picked up on that. The whole terrorist thing and all.”

  “Not our doing, mate,” Stone said.

  “I know,” Israel said, “but I was hoping there was something you might be able to do about it.”

  “I’m already working on it,” Warburton said. “I’ve had a couple of heated discussions with the DGRI man responsible for that decision and I’m trying to pull a few strings elsewhere to get your name cleared.”

  “I appreciate that,” Israel said.

  Warburton nodded in acknowledgment. “In the meantime, after talking with Allison I took the liberty of arranging to have dinner in my office with some of my staff. It’s a rather large sirloin roast, far more than the four of us could have eaten. I was thinking you might join us.”

  Israel smiled. “Well, Mrs. Warburton, I guess that means that I like the way you think.”

  She returned the smile for a brief moment and then gestured toward the tray for Israel to help himself. No one else moved to join him so Erin walked over and grabbed a small plate as he pulled the cover from the roast. A delicious aroma washed over them and Israel looked at Erin with a question in his eyes.

  “What?” she said. “I get hungry, too.”

  “Get yours first,” Israel said. “I don’t want you to accidentally use the same utensils as me or something.”

  “Michelle,” Warburton said, “why don’t you give us your findings while Israel and Erin have their dinner.”

  “Right,” Michelle said. “Mr. Stone, are we secure?”

  Stone nodded.

  Michelle walked over to Warburton’s desk and picked up a tablet computer. She tapped it a few times and the wall monitor beside Warburton’s desk lit up. A series of photos appeared in a stack in the middle of the screen and then, one by one, moved from the stack unt
il they were arranged in a neat grid. There were a total of fifteen and each one had a name and a date across the bottom of the image.

  “These are the random samplings I took while Pythia was running,” Michelle said. “Each of them is one of the Progeny abductees that we know about. This data was recovered from a cell phone that Israel was kind enough to bring us after encountering said agent in the city. Israel, in the interest of clarity, would you mind telling Olivia and Mr. Stone everything you told Allison and me about that encounter? Just everything after you got back into Atlanta.”

  Israel had settled into a chair next to a glass coffee table and repeated the story between bites of perfectly prepared roast. When he was done, he looked up at his audience and wiped his mouth with a linen napkin.

  Warburton’s face was its usual mask of objectivity. Stone, however, wore an expression of concentration that Israel could only call stressed. Allison and Michelle sat quietly waiting while Erin poured iced tea into a crystal glass and plucked another roll from a tray next to the roast.

  “So,” Olivia said, “if I understand this correctly, there are now four, potentially five, known Paragons walking the world. Five.” She said the last word as though she were a judge passing sentence.

  “I think five is the safest bet,” Michelle said. “The Screed brothers called their boss ‘The Seer’. I don’t think that the title would apply unless there was some sort of precognitive or extrasensory power at play. Couple that with the fact that the only two abductees we’ve managed to rescue turned out to be Paragons and it starts to put a frightening spin on things.”

  “How so?” Olivia asked.

  “Well, we know that there are people with the potential to Awaken all around us. Among those- a very small percentage, we think - some have the potential to Awaken as Paragons. When you consider a current U.S. population of over three hundred and twenty million, though, that’s still a hell of a lot of people who could wake up with superpowers one day.”

  “Please don’t use that word,” Israel said. “This isn’t a comic book.”

  “No, it’s not, Israel, but what would you suggest I call it? I don’t think ‘abilities’ quite covers the scope of what Erin can do, do you?”

  “We can argue the correct vernacular some other time,” Warburton said. “Continue, Michelle.”

  Michelle turned to her. “According to the Council of the Veil data that Pythia has, there has not been a single recorded Paragon Awakening globally since the Revolutionary War, yet we just stumbled across two in a dark basement.”

  “Why aren’t there more?” Israel asked. “If so many people have the potential, why aren’t they everywhere? What’s keeping them so rare?”

  “Exposure,” Allison said. “Do you remember us talking about the Inner Dark and all the different kinds of energies and things that exist there? These are the energies that the average person has to be exposed to in order to Awaken, and they aren’t things you just stumble across. They aren’t like mist or fog or something, you can’t just stroll into them.”

  “But there’s enough that you guys need a secret society, a government agency, and Mrs. Warburton’s private army to keep it a secret? That doesn’t track for me.”

  “That’s because you are assuming all the current Awakened are newly so,” Warburton said. “They aren’t. The vast majority of the people who live behind the Veil are second, third, fourth generation. Most of the ones I know were born that way.”

  Israel nodded. “Okay, so an Awakened mom and dad can make an Awakened baby?”

  “Genetics at its most basic,” Allison said.

  “Which is not what we are faced with,” Michelle said. There was an urgent edge to her voice that Israel had never heard before. “What we are facing is potentially catastrophic.”

  The room fell silent as they returned their attention to her. She stood up and pointed at the screen. “Five of the people on that list were among the dead we pulled from the Oceanside facility. One of the five was the person you guys were lucky enough to see with those things coming out of her chest. We managed to collect some post-mortem tissue samples before the site was incinerated and each one of them shows the same unknown protein markers that we got from Erin’s and Israel’s blood samples. Pythia posits, and I agree, that each one of those people was a Paragon potential. Assuming that, it begs the question of whether or not the other two hundred or so people we found in this phone share that distinction.”

  “Not possible,” Stone said. “How could the Progeny possibly know whether or not someone was a potential?”

  “Because they have a Seer,” Israel said. He looked at Michelle. “Right? You think this guy somehow picks out people like me and Erin, then he sends his evil minions to collect them?”

  “Exactly,” Michelle said.

  “To what end, though? What could any of this possibly accomplish?”

  Michelle smiled and nodded toward Erin. “I think she’s answered that for us.”

  Erin said, “Me? What did I do?”

  “Remember back at my lab when you showed me your power for the first time? Remember how I said the energy requirements were ridiculously high for such a thing?”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “It’s been a long-held theory that any kind of Awakened who manifests an unusual ability, even a small one, is a biological conduit to the Inner Dark. The theory is that they can tap into energies from that realm and utilize them in whatever ways dictated by their specific genetics. In your case, teleportation at will.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “If someone with a small power is a conduit for that small amount of energy then, in theory, a Paragon would be a much, much larger conduit since the power requirements for your kind of abilities would be much higher. The theory also states that under the proper circumstances that conduit could be maintained ”

  Warburton’s eyes widened in realization. “Oh my god,” she whispered.

  Michelle looked at her. “Exactly. That’s why they need so many.”

  “Exactly, what?” Israel asked.

  “Energy isn’t the only thing in the Inner Dark,” Warburton said. “It’s inhabited by things we call Dwellers. They are alien and hostile and wholly destructive to any living thing that they come in contact with. To the Progeny, though, they’re gods. The Progeny exists to open the way for them to enter this world. They believe that by doing so they will be rewarded with whatever they desire- kings in the new world order or something of the like.”

  “Wait,” Erin said. “The squidheads? That’s what those were?”

  “Got it in one,” Stone said. “The Dweller was actually the black things that had taken up residence on the host’s head. We call them squidlings, but the science types have a different name for them.”

  “Trans-dimensional Parasitic Salp,” Allison said.

  “Yes, that,” Stone said. “They come through a breach and attach themselves to the first human they encounter and- Bob’s your uncle -you’ve got yourself a squidhead.”

  “Okay,” Erin said, “but those things went down pretty easy. How could the Progeny worship something that squishy?”

  “That’s not the entity they worship. The Salp are, quite literally, the fleas from its hide,” Warburton said.

  Erin opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it again as that information worked its way into her thoughts.

  “Opening a Breach Point,” Michelle said, “is no small thing. It requires that Inner Dark energy be harnessed and concentrated on a specific point. The more energy you pour into that point, the bigger the breach.”

  “Right,” Israel said. “Like that thing we saw in Oceanside.”

  Michelle shook her head. “Not exactly. If what we’re theorizing is correct, then they have well upwards of a hundred potentials. What you saw in Oceanside was the result of eleven sacrifices. That created a paper cut on the skin of reality- as many as they have now would be more like an autopsy incision.”

  Israel nodde
d. “Okay, so this Seer person identifies potential Paragons, the Screeds round them up, and then they use the energy from these biological conduits to open a breach so that these Inner Dark things they worship can come through. Two things: Why all the ritual around the killings? Why not just get them all in a room and gas them or something? Also, for this to work, they have to have that first Awakened Paragon, that first tiny bit of energy to get the breach started. If Awakenings are so rare, where does that come from? Identifying a potential is useless if you can’t wake them up. For that matter, how did the Progeny end up with three Paragons working for them at the same time?”

  “As far as the ritual goes,” Warburton said, “the Progeny of the Inner Dark is first and foremost a religious cult. All religions have rituals that are not strictly necessary to the process at hand, but they are grandiose and stir emotions in the hearts of the adherents. Make someone feel something and they will tend to follow you no matter how ludicrous your claims. Michelle, do you have any ideas on Israel’s second question?”

  Michelle shook her head. “Not one.”

  Erin spoke up. “So is that why everyone is so freaked out about there being five of us? Because we could maybe open one of these breach things?”

  “Not exactly,” Warburton said. “It’s just that that hasn’t happened in a very, very long time.”

  “How long?” Erin asked.

  “Three thousand years, give or take,” Allison said. “The last time we know for certain there was a collected group of Paragons was Romulus and Remus in ancient Rome.” Her eyes met Israel’s and found a growing understanding there.

  “You don’t mean what I think you mean do you?” he said.

  Allison nodded. “It started with the Greeks, really. We think most of the Paragons of that time came into being a few centuries after the Greek Dark Ages. Why they proliferated so readily then is a mystery, but there are secret Council records that provide near-concrete evidence that Hercules, Zeus, Hera, Dionysus, Artemis, and Ares were all very real people. It’s a common belief among those of us with access to those records that there were others, but we lack solid evidence to state it as fact.”