“Don’t do it.” Fil’s voice sliced through the tense silence. The man’s thoughts screamed at him, wished him harm, and Fil’s sensitive ears heard the secondary weapon lifted and trained upon his retreating form.
The man ignored Fil, and his finger began the fractional second of movement against the trigger.
The weapon dissolved in the man’s hands.
Two guards tried to avail themselves of Fil’s distracted attention, withdrawing automatic weapons of their own and firing at the intruder. The bullets dissolved before getting within ten feet of Fil. Each fired again, watching as the bullets dissolved while the man in black moved further away. The weapons melted before they could fire another round, leaving the men pulling triggers that no longer existed.
Fil turned around and walked backward up the road toward Headquarters Plaza, watching. The men at the dock glanced at each other, looks of fear mixing with looks of sheer confusion. Their supervisor stared at Fil before fishing a mobile phone from his pocket and placing a call.
Fil smiled and waved at the supervisor from his perch up the ascending road. “Tell them I said hello!”
He turned and continued at a brisk pace up the road leading from the port to Headquarters. The gleaming black marble building with the golden Aliomenti name and symbol leered down at him, and Fil resisted the urge to fire a rude gesture at the building. Knowing they were several minutes behind schedule and Energy use was now permissible, he lifted a few inches off the ground and skimmed along above the road. He could teleport, but he generally avoided that now after the disastrous outcomes he’d seen in the Cataclysm. Human and Aliomenti pedestrians in the Headquarters Plaza stopped and stared as he floated past the invisible Alliance perimeter, the air crackling around him.
He descended to the ground and walked toward the main entrance of Headquarters at a brisk pace. The doors were twenty feet tall, composed of a clear, lightweight, glass-like composite that allowed them to swing on power-assisted hinges without straining passers-through. Fil didn’t bother testing the hinges. He phased out and moved through the door before returning to his normal solid state.
Those loitering in the lobby watched him walk through a very large, very solid door, and decided the small talk could wait. They scattered out of the lobby to the elevator banks and their work spaces at a brisk pace.
The receptionist didn’t abandon her post, a credit to her courage. But her eyes widened in terror nonetheless as Fil approached. She swallowed and failed to blink.
He pulled the sunglasses off his head and smiled pleasantly. “Good day to you. My name is Fil Trask. I’d like to meet with Arthur Lowell, the Leader of the Aliomenti.”
The woman regained her composure, typing on the holographic keyboard present on her desk surface. “Tr… Trask, did you… say? I… I’m sorry, Mr. Trask. I… I have no record of an appointment, and Mr. Lowell—”
“Mr. Lowell would be delighted to see me despite my somewhat unexpected arrival, I’m sure.” Fil maintained the smile, leaning in conspiratorially. The receptionist leaned away. “Could you set an appointment for me starting in, say, five minutes? I can show myself up.”
“Well, I’m not really allowed—”
“No need to bother, Andrea.” Fil turned toward the new speaker, keeping his face a mask of serene calm. “I’ll escort Mr. Trask personally.”
Porthos turned to Fil, an oily, threatening smile on his face. “Welcome to Aliomenti Headquarters, Mr. Trask. I do hope you’ll not enjoy your stay.”
Fil nodded and leaned in. “I suspect you’ll find my presence less than enjoyable.”
He amped up the Energy emission and watched with a smile as Porthos’ face arced in pain.
XII
THE INITIAL SHOCK OF THE impact with the ceiling wore off, and Ashley forced herself to breathe. Each breath carried with it a severe bit of agony, and she knew she’d cracked at least one rib in the crash.
As she compartmentalized the pain she became acutely aware of several disturbing facts.
She felt herself pulled against the ceiling of the computer room, and her route there hadn’t been dissimilar to a fall from the same height in stronger-than-Earth gravity.
The ceiling was coated with a sheer netting material she’d not noticed before, a material that gave her an uneasy sensation she couldn’t explain.
She couldn’t sense her nanos. No extra sensory data fed to her mind, no sense that she had that swarm of miniature problem-solving robots she could call in a time of need.
Like right now.
With great effort and a not inconsiderable amount of pain to her wounded ribcage, she pushed herself to her side and rolled over onto her back so that she faced the floor.
Bernard stared at her, and the look on his face made clear that he saw her, not that he merely chanced to look in her direction. His face bore a look of unmistakable shock, as if women didn’t appear on the ceiling of his working quarters each day. His mouth was moving, and she could make out the words “I must be dreaming” forming on his lips over and over.
He took a shuddering step back to the panel behind the glass he’d just shattered and peered inside before pulling out a device resembling an old laser pointer. He moved back to his desk, opened the binder he’d perused to a tabbed page, and read quickly. Then he looked at her, aimed the pointer, and used the beam of light to trace a wide, loose outline around her.
The netting detached from the ceiling and wrapped around her, cut free from the ceiling shackles by the laser. She only had time to breathe a pained sigh of relief that he’d not used it to slice her open when she felt her Energy draining away. It was as if the Hunter Aramis himself embraced her rather than an inanimate net.
In that instant, Ashley knew she’d never leave this room alive.
Her resolve strengthened. If she died, she’d make certain she gave the Aliomenti no clues to her purpose here, no information they could use against her friends and colleagues. She found an inner physical strength to combat the sense of fatigue as the ever-present Energy force drained away, and her fingers sought the pouch at her waist, patting against it to ensure nothing remained inside. Bernard spoke, but she paid him no attention, focused solely on ensuring her death didn’t lead to others.
Her touch revealed that nothing remained in the bag just as the netting cocoon around her detached fully from the ceiling. She plunged toward the tiled floor, screaming as she anticipated the second impact.
She didn’t know what broke the second time. It seemed it would be easier to list the parts of her body not in tremendous agony than those with only minor damage. She wanted to cry, but resolved that she’d not waste her last moments on tears. Her rattled, concussed brain sensed she’d missed something, something important. She had to remember.
She felt the tiles rattle slightly from his footfalls, each step driving her nearer to unconsciousness from the sheer pain of it all. The boots. She could turn her head and see the boots through her squinted eyes. They moved as if in thick mud, great effort exerted to pull them from the tiles. Why was that? She tried to feel her body, and felt as if the ceiling still pulled on her, trying to get her back. The netting held her down. Were the boots holding him down?
She heard his bones creak, each crackle sounding like a gunshot to her rattled mind, and he reached down. She felt his hand upon her back and recoiled instinctively. But there was nothing sinister in his gesture, no movement of his hand to parts of her he had no reason to touch. It was as if he didn’t believe she was real and needed to confirm her tangibility.
In case of ghosts…
She understood now. She’d understand him far better with her Energy skills restored. The lack of emotive and thought data from this man terrified her more than the falls had hurt her.
Bernard put a hand under her shoulder and another under her hip and rolled her onto her back, taking care to ensure that the netting remained wrapped around her body. His face still showed confusion, but there was a confidence there now h
e’d not shown before. He knew the situation was fully in his control. “Who are you?” he asked.
In case of ghosts… “I’m a ghost. Boo.” Her voice, scratchy and strained from the physical traumas just endured, certainly sounded like some type of specter.
He moved back slightly, eyes widening. “Where… where did you come from?”
“Kansas. But I’m not there anymore, am I?”
He didn’t catch the reference to the old movie. Of course he wouldn’t. The movie was three centuries old, a throwback to her youth. “Oh. But… what… how did you get in here?”
“I walked in the door right behind you.”
Curiously, he believed her. And she’d told the truth, or close to it. “But how? I didn’t see you or hear you.”
“I’m a ghost. Remember?” She closed her eyes. The overhead lights blinded her as he shifted his position yet again, and she felt a headache coming on the likes of which she’d not felt since she’d indulged in zirple, morange, and ambrosia for the first time centuries ago.
“You don’t seem like a ghost.”
She opened her eyes once more and shrugged, instantly regretting the effort. “How many ghosts have you met?” She spoke through gritted teeth.
As her breathing stabilized, she started testing the net, trying to find its weaknesses or openings that might allow her to throw it off. They’d developed a similar technology in the Cavern years earlier, a net which drained the wearer of Energy, a training tool for those going Outside to prepare for possible confrontations with Aramis. This net was far more potent than any she’d tried back home. “Can you get this off me?”
“Nuh uh.” Bernard shook his head. “I don’t think you’re a ghost, but I do know that women who suddenly appear in this highly secure room without using doors aren’t safe. That net stays.”
She stared at him through the netting. “What are you planning to do with me, Bernard?”
He looked shaken, probably wondering how she knew his name. Then he pulled out his phone and scrolled through a list before dialing a number. “Who are you calling, Bernard?”
He ignored her. “Yes, this is Bernard in IT. The manual said that if we ever had to use the Ghosts button we should call this number.”
Ashley focused on the net again, but as she tested it she saw a brief flash on her wrist. The remote. That’s what she’d forgotten. The remote that controlled her sphere. She wasn’t going to leave this place as she’d hoped. She needed to send the sphere back to the Cavern or activate the self-destruct mechanism. She wriggled around, trying to bring her hands together.
“Well, no. Juliette left, and then an alarm went off. Device overheated. I checked and it normalized on its own. But… then I heard a cabinet shift. Like something pushed it. The timing of those was too close and seemed too coincidental.”
She needed to get her hands together, needed to swipe her fingers across the remote to activate the self-destruct mechanism.
Bernard’s attention remained with the voice on the phone, clearly not concerned about her posing any type of threat. “Well, no, I don’t normally believe in ghosts. But the sign’s been there every day, and when I realized Juliette had left and I was alone… well, I went ahead and decided to push the button.”
The net was too tight. She braced herself, trying to roll, trying to loosen the net’s grip just a bit. Each twist and roll ravaged her broken ribs, but she fought to keep the screams inside.
“What happened? Well, I pushed the button and this… young woman appeared. And everything flew up toward the ceiling, including her… Me? No, but I feel like I’m being pulled toward the ceiling, but I’m still here on the ground. It’s hard to move, though, like my boots weigh a ton. Everything but me, though…”
Ashley glanced up. Pens, pencils, and keyboards arrayed themselves across the ceiling above Bernard’s desk. They’d built this into the room during construction, had known of the possibility of invisible members of the Alliance accessing the room. The gravity reversal… She looked at the heavy boots again, and at the floor. Magnets? In the server room? That couldn’t be right; true magnets would destroy the equipment they’d gone to such effort to hide. Whatever the mechanism, it kept Bernard anchored firmly to the floor when all else flew toward the new, stronger gravitational force. But…
“Well, then I saw the laser pointer thingy behind the panel near the button after reading about it in the manual. The procedure told me to use the laser to trace a loose outline around the ghost. So I did. And this net wrapped around her and dropped her to the ground.”
She rocked left, and then right. The netting loosened a bit. She pulled her left arm toward her right. Six more inches…
“Yes, she’s still alive… What does she look like? Late twenties, I guess? Longer hair, brown, quite beautiful, actually, though I can’t really see her with all the netting… Does she look disoriented? Well, she did just suffer back-to-back twenty-foot falls, the latter while wrapped in a net. I’d guess anybody would be disoriented, right? Most people would be really, really hurt, and she’s sort of writhing around on the ground right now. Maybe… maybe she’s not a ghost? Maybe there’s a demon in her, trying to get out?”
She snorted, in spite of her predicament. The net, no doubt magnetized to hold her to the floor, budged just a bit. The fingers of her left hand grazed the middle of her palm on her right. Not yet to the remote, but getting closer.
“You want me to do what? But… yes, I understand that it’s part of my job, but… are you sure? Don’t we need to question her first?”
The hairs on the back of Ashely’s neck stood on end. She rocked with everything she had, and the net moved a fractional inch more. Her fingers grazed the remote circling her wrist. She swiped it, not certain if that was the Return or Self-Destruct gesture. The band on her wrist disintegrated.
Had the net moved enough to get free? She pulled her left arm back and tried to find the end. If she could throw the net off, she could get away from Bernard, long enough for her Energy—
Bernard hung up the phone and walked toward her, standing above her, his face grim. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, not able to look her in the eyes.
Then he pulled his pistol from his holster and shot her in the head.
XIII
ANDREA LOOKED BACK AND FORTH between the two men, attempting to make sense of their puzzling words of greeting, before lowering her eyes to the floor. She slid her chair farther away from Fil, stealing wary glances at him as if worried the man in black might attack a revered figure in the Aliomenti world.
Porthos glanced at Fil again. “Mister… Trask, you say? Fascinating name. Follow me.”
Fil, bemused at the formality, followed. He sent a small burst of positive empathic Energy at Andrea to aid her efforts to regain calm, and sensed a more relaxed mood immediately. She’d relate the incident to her friends later, turning the intense encounter with the strange man with the sunglasses to nothing more than an entertaining story.
Their shoes clomped against the tile flooring. With the population in the lobby thinned out following Fil’s dramatic entrance, each footfall echoed as if they were inside a tomb. Fil noted that Porthos wore boots with his formal suit. Fil, walking next to Porthos, kicked the toe of his shoe into the side of Porthos boot, slightly unbalancing the Hunter. “Swapping your cape for boots?” He paused. “Sebastian.”
The Hunter regained his balance and brushed his sleeves in a dignified manner. “That’s Mister Sebastian to you, kid.” He paused. “My preferred attire doesn’t mesh with our business dealings and operations.”
“And boots do? What type of business operation are you running here, anyway?”
Porthos shrugged. “You never know when they might come in handy.”
Fil thought that an odd assessment. He shrugged. “You do know why I’m here.”
“Of course. We’ve been waiting.”
“For me? And no welcoming committee. I’m disappointed.” Fil couldn’t help but smile.
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“Not you, specifically. We… thought someone else might come instead.” He glanced at Fil. “You seem… very familiar to me. Your signal is incredibly strong.” He snapped his fingers as his eyes widened. “You’re the one. The Destructor. The one who triggered the Cataclysm.”
Fil felt his insides chill. He didn’t like being reminded of that day. “If you say so.”
Porthos snorted. “Why hide or regret it, kid? Nobody here today remembers any of it. It happened a hundred and fifty years ago. For all they know, it’s something their grandparents made up to teach them a lesson of some kind. You could announce that you’d done it, right here, right now, and most people would shrug their shoulders.”
“Most people think it was a military test of a new weapon gone horribly wrong.”
“Most people say that because they’ve never been given reason to think there’s another option. And… we intend to keep it that way.”
Fil snorted. “Ah, yes. Your bloody Oaths. Maintaining the purity of the world, one bullied human at a time.”
“Humans possessed of too much power become corrupt, kid. You know that. They’re better off not knowing. They’d wreck the world with the kind of power we have.”
Sort of like I did, Fil thought.
They walked in silence past the rows of elevator cars lining both sides of a long corridor, moving toward the gold-plated doors at the end. A guard sat behind a small desk, and a red velvet rope provided a visual barrier to entry. The guard, who’d been reading a battered paperback copy of The Three Musketeers, heard their heavy footsteps and glanced up. He recognized Porthos and set the book down before springing to his feet, his eyes falling upon Fil with deep suspicion. His hand hovered near the weapon holstered at his side. Fil frowned inwardly. Since when had Arthur Lowell relaxed his ban on firearm possession?
Porthos offered a brief nod at the guard. “Rand, my… guest will accompany me upstairs.”
Convergence Page 8
