Triskellion 3: The Gathering

by Will Peterson

  Will come to pass,

  When Three Become One

  In the City of Glass.

  He instantly recalled the smell of beeswax and dust in the library and the brooding atmosphere of the grand house in England where he had pored over the old books and documents on long afternoons.

  Documents that had foretold of this day.

  And he remembered a time years before that: the afternoon at the lake when he had overheard the story for the first time from the mouth of his own father. The revelation that had changed his life for ever.

  He had once denied his fate – denied his connection to Rachel, Adam, Gabriel, and the ancient Travellers. But since then he had been reborn, not once but twice, and he had finally come to accept this link; to know what it was that made him special.

  It was what marked him out for greatness and power.

  “We’re descending, Pastor,” Brother Jedediah said. He wrung his hands, then pointed excitedly at the mass of Triple Wheelers assembled below them at the tram terminal.

  “I can see that,” Crane said. “Make sure none of them touches me when we get out.”

  The red and white gondola clanked into the terminus and the crowd of Triple Wheelers below gave a collective gasp as many of them saw their leader in the flesh for the first time. Crane stepped out onto the platform high above them and waved. Some reached out for him; others screamed, wept or spoke in tongues while he walked down the steel stairs, protected by his phalanx of bodyguards. He climbed into the open-topped stretch limo that was to take him the final kilometre into Central Park.

  The sea of people parted and the car began its slow progress down 59th Street. They watched in awe as he went by.

  The man who had promised them the world.

  Stewart International Airport lay ninety-five kilometres north of Manhattan in the southern Hudson Valley. It had been developed in the 1930s as a military base, but had since grown into a major airport as well as being an emergency landing facility for the space shuttle.

  It was also one of the many locations across the country where the Flight Trust housed its aircraft. As per the director’s orders, a helicopter had been standing by when the Gulfstream touched down, ready to transport Todd Crow and his precious cargo directly to the Flight Building.

  “I can’t believe it’s never struck me before,” Rachel said. They were hurrying across the tarmac towards the chopper; its blades were whirring noisily and its headlights blazed in spite of the bright sunshine.

  “What?” Adam asked.

  She pointed towards the helicopter. “How much they look like bees. The way they hover and dip.” She blinked, remembering the attack helicopter that had almost killed them two years before. “The way they buzz and sting…”

  “Angry bees,” Adam said.

  Crow led Laura towards the front of the helicopter and clambered up into the pilot’s seat. He checked his instruments quickly, then turned to make sure that Rachel, Adam and Gabriel were safely on board.

  Gabriel had stopped on the tarmac. Rachel and Adam ran back to him.

  “I’m not coming with you,” he said.

  “What?” Adam stared at Rachel, his eyes wide in disbelief.

  “I’ll catch up with you. There’s somewhere else I need to go first.”

  Rachel shook her head. “We can’t go in there without you. I don’t want to go in there without you.”

  “You’re strong enough now, and you’ll be even stronger when you need to be.” He reached out towards the Triskellion that hung round Rachel’s neck, nodded towards the one round Adam’s. “Besides, you’ll be safe enough if you give me one of those.”

  Rachel began to unfasten the leather thong.

  “They’re less likely to kill us until they’ve got all three.” Adam was doing his best to sound casual, but the worry was clear enough in his eyes and in the slight tremble round his mouth. “That’s what you’re saying, right?”

  Gabriel took the Triskellion from Rachel and hung it round his own neck. “That’s what I’m saying.”

  Crow stuck his head out of the small window in the helicopter’s cockpit. “We should get going!” he shouted.

  “Be careful,” Rachel said. She leaned forward to check the fastening on the Triskellion; to brush her fingers across the back of Gabriel’s neck.

  He lunged forward suddenly and threw his arms round her. She wrapped her own round him in response, feeling his ribs through his thin shirt, his breath on her cheek. But before she could say anything, he had broken away and stepped across to embrace Adam.

  Adam hugged him back and then stepped away and nodded a little awkwardly. Gabriel’s green eyes flashed behind the thick strands of black hair being blown across his face by the draft from the rotor blades.

  The twins turned and ran to the chopper. Within a few seconds of shutting the door they were watching the ground drop away from them as the aircraft rose quickly into the air.

  Laura smiled grimly at them from the cockpit. Next to her, Crow was pulling back on the joystick, pointing the helicopter south towards New York City.

  “Should be fifteen minutes or so,” he said.

  Rachel pressed her hand to the window and stared at the figure on the tarmac below them. The noise inside the helicopter was almost deafening, but Rachel heard Gabriel’s voice as clearly as if he were sitting next to her with his mouth pressed close to her ear.

  You be careful too, he said. It’s a dangerous place.

  Gabriel was little more than a dark speck against the earth now.

  Where? she asked.

  The belly of the beast.

  Ezekiel Crane had never heard applause like it as he mounted the stage in Central Park. The clapping and the singing drowned out all other noises; it was so loud that even the clatter of the helicopter flying low over the park could not be heard.

  Bands had been playing all day, filling the park with music, and the people who had gathered had danced and sung themselves into a frenzy. One of America’s greatest performers, a country and western legend and recent convert to the Triple Wheel, finished his song and welcomed his leader. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” he said; “Tick-Tock … the time is now. I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the man who has come to save us all. Without his vision I would be lost and in the wilderness. He has shown me, he has shown you, he has shown all of us the way. Amen. Ladies and Gentlemen, please show your appreciation for the Archminister and Founder of the Church of the Triple Wheel … Pastor … Ezekiel … Crane!”

  Crane had saved a dazzling silver suit for the occasion, and the sunlight hit him, making him visible from far across the park. His hair and teeth were peroxide white and blown up to gigantic proportions on the screens on either side of the stage. He raised his arms and the cape that Jedediah had draped over his shoulders billowed behind him, making him look like he might be about to take off and fly.

  “I love you,” he shouted. The crowd roared. “I love you, and I have come to show you the way.” He lowered his arms and continued in a sonorous voice, a whisper that rolled across Central Park like a gathering wind. “Hush, Brothers and Sisters; hush, and hear these words. Today we are gathered for the last time in this life. Tomorrow we will begin anew in the Promised Land. I will lead you to our new fathers; I will guide you to the Rapture. I am Ezekiel One, and I will show you the light! I will show you the light! I will show you the light!”

  “Say it again!” people howled from the front of the stage.

  “I will show you the light. Sing with me…” Crane picked up his guitar and began to play, and as one, the hundreds of thousands of people in the park began to sing words that they had all come to know by heart…

  “Tick-Tock, the day has come,

  Tick-Tock, we are as one,

  Tick-Tock, we’re rising up,

  To drink from Ezekiel’s Cup.

  “The Gathering, we will ascend,

  The Gathering, our souls will mend,

  The Gathering, th
is is the end…”

  Gabriel pushed through the crowd.

  All were on their feet – singing, swaying, holding children on their shoulders – their eyes fixed on the stage. He needed to be closer in order to get control of the man he knew was his nemesis – the devil who had tried to undermine everything Gabriel had worked for as long as he had lived.

  Gabriel stumbled over a twisted picnic blanket and accidentally kicked open a bright-red plastic lunch box. The feeling of foreboding that had been threatening to overpower him since he’d entered the park suddenly made sense. The lunch box contained bottles of pills and vials of liquid barbiturates. Enough drugs to kill an entire family. All were branded with the Triple Wheel.

  He found another lunch box and another; their owners were far too obsessed with what was happening on stage to notice Gabriel going through their belongings. Each box was packed with the same cocktail of lethal drugs.

  What was it that Crane intended to do?

  The director imagined that this must be what it felt like to be a child on Christmas morning. Standing just inside the door that led out on to the building’s restricted-access helicopter pad, he was watching the sky, listening for the sound of the rotor blades, and imagining that this was how it must feel to anticipate a wonderful gift.

  A brilliant … spectacular … surprise.

  If the director of the Hope Project had had a normal childhood, he would have known that feeling, but as it was he could only guess at what it must be like…

  He had learned many other things, of course, during his troubled adolescence and the strange and interesting years that had followed. He had studied archaeology, astronomy and history, the twin disciplines of science and war.

  He knew about the Travellers who had visited over many centuries and he knew what they had brought with them. He knew about the Triskellions and where they had been found, and it had been his life’s work to see them united.

  To see the Three Become One.

  He had engineered it…

  What nobody knew, what no amount of research could tell anyone, was exactly what the unification of the three amulets would bring about. The director could not possibly know what would happen, but he knew that the one who made it happen would be at the centre of the most powerful force that the planet had ever experienced. He knew that the one who brought the Triskellions together would know what it was like to be God…

  He felt the excitement build in him like an electrical pulse as the helicopter buzzed into view: zigzagging across the canvas of sky that was changing minute by minute. He stepped back into the shadows. From here it was only ten floors up to the secret eyrie at the building’s summit; to the room in which the power of the Triskellions would finally be unleashed.

  A few steps away, no more. A few minutes…

  He watched the chopper descend, the blades slow and the rush of air fall away. The helicopter door opened and he stepped out onto the landing pad to welcome Todd Crow, his eyes eagerly searching for the package he was expecting to see in the man’s hands.

  He saw nothing.

  “Tell me they’re still in the chopper, Crow,” he said.

  Crow said nothing; he just stood and stared. Over his shoulder the director saw others emerging from the heli-copter. Laura Sullivan stepped down first, followed by Rachel and Adam. The pulse of excitement became a power-ful surge of fury. He moved close to Crow and put a hand round his neck. “What the hell are they doing here? Since when did you stop following orders?”

  Crow took hold of the director’s fingers, bent them back and pushed the hand away from his neck. “Change of plan,” he said.

  The director’s mind raced; his brain struggled to adjust to the new situation, to make new plans. He tried his best to summon the smile he knew the children would be expecting as they rushed towards him, their arms outstretched.

  Their expressions were open and eager; their voices were unrestrained and full of joy: as happy as children on Christmas morning.

  “Dad…!”

  Laura hung back and watched, helpless and horrified, as Rachel and Adam ran past Crow towards the man on the landing pad. Their screams of excitement were shrill and felt painful above the sound of her own heart thumping.

  The director of the Hope Project was Rachel and Adam’s father.

  Ralph Newman was the man who had recruited Laura ten years earlier. He had been the scientist who had befriended her, or had pretended to. The one who had encouraged her and had organized funding for her studies, drawing her deeper and deeper into a project that she had not fully understood until it was far too late; until there had been no way for her to get out.

  Now Laura’s mind was racing with dreadful questions. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that the man in charge of the Hope Project’s most secretive operation was also the father of the children it had hunted so mercilessly. Was it possible that the head of the Bureau of Extra-Terrestrial Activity just happened to be the father of the most special children in the world?

  How could it have happened? How could anyone have planned it?

  And the most horrifying question of all.

  How could a father order the murder of his own children?

  Ezekiel Crane’s speech was coming to an end. As the crowd cheered and clapped, he bid his worshippers well and told them it was time to follow him. He ordered them to march from the park, to swarm down Broadway and gather together at the foot of the Flight Building.

  He told them that they were doing something very special.

  His followers began drifting towards the park’s many exits, and Crane stepped into the basket of a hot-air balloon which had been slowly inflating throughout his speech and which now stood waiting for him at the side of the stage.

  Brother Jedediah untied the mooring rope. “See you on the other side, Pastor,” he said.

  “I doubt it,” Crane replied.

  With a gust of flame from the burner, the balloon – vast and white and marked with the sign of the Triple Wheel – slowly began to rise. It was at this moment that Gabriel pushed through the front row of the crowd and climbed onto the stage.

  He screamed at Crane, who was now receding into the distance as the balloon climbed into the sky, and the pastor peered down over the edge of the basket.

  He froze when Gabriel pulled the Triskellion from his shirt and held it up for him to see: out of reach.

  High above the park, the wind rushing in his ears, Ezekiel Crane could clearly hear the voice of the boy far below. The boy into whose eyes he had stared at the theatre in St Louis only days before.

  “What is my name?” the boy had asked then.

  Crane now knew perfectly well who he was, and he recognized the mockery, the threat, in the boy’s voice as it rose up to taunt him: “It’s a big day for both of us.”

  The relief, the happiness, that Rachel had felt on seeing her father had quickly given way to confusion and panic. Throwing her arms round him, she had felt only resistance. She and Adam had cried and babbled, telling their father how they had thought he was dead and that now they had found him, they could try and help their mother. Finally, they could be a family again.

  He had looked at them as though they were ghosts.

  “Dad?” Adam was pale and shaky and looked like he might collapse at any moment. “What’s the matter?”

  Rachel looked into her father’s eyes, but they were fixed on the Triskellion round Adam’s neck. She stepped back and turned to Laura, who just shook her head. Glancing over at Major Crow, Rachel saw as much confusion on his face as she guessed was etched into her own.

  “‘Dad’?” Crow said. “I don’t understand.” He stared at Rachel, confusion mixed with sympathy and … horror. “This is your…”

  He didn’t need to say it.

  “You’re the director?” Rachel was trying to stay calm, but she knew she was only moments away from breaking down completely; from weeping on her father’s neck … or clawing at it. Only seconds from throwing h
erself from the roof or at the face of the man who had turned her life upside down.

  “I can explain, Rachel.” There was a shadow of the smile she had been dreaming about; a hint of the concern in his voice that she had known and loved since she was a little girl.

  “Daddy…?”

  “Come with me and I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Wait!” Laura shouted.

  “You should come with us too, Doctor Sullivan.”

  The director walked across the tarmac to a metal door, which slid back to reveal the interior of a small lift. He beckoned to Rachel and Adam.

  Adam took Rachel’s hand.

  What the hell’s happening? she asked with her mind.

  We need to go and find out, Adam said.

  They walked to the lift and their father stepped aside to let them in. A moment later Laura joined them. Ralph Newman gave her a sickly smile of welcome as she moved inside. The smile quickly died when Crow appeared in the doorway and Laura and the children moved to accommodate him.

  “Where they go, I go,” Crow said.

  Ralph Newman nodded slowly, before reaching into the pocket of his jacket and producing a small black pistol. “Only room for four,” he said.

  Then, as the lift doors started to close, he raised his arm and shot Todd Crow dead.

  Rachel, Adam and Laura were still screaming as the lift took them up the final few floors to the very top of the Flight Building. Ralph Newman stared at them impassively – simply interested in their reaction to the murder that had just taken place in front of their eyes and not in their feelings.

  The observation tower was a conical structure, like the tip of a cigar. It was made entirely of glass and nestled between the outstretched metal wings on the roof. The lift doors hissed open, and Ralph Newman pushed his children and Laura Sullivan out, the gun still in his hand.

  Rachel took in the three hundred and sixty-degree panoramic view of the city. She noticed the white hot-air balloon drifting towards the building between the skyscrapers.

  “Sit,” Newman said. He gestured at the leather chairs that were lined up by the windows.