The Hunter turned toward his audience and nodded, smirking, as he recognized the addition of Will and Adam to those gathered. “Appreciate the two of you joining us for this little party.” He glanced down, in Fil’s direction, and frowned. “Your children don’t deal well with stress, Stark.”
“My children deal with stress as any normal person would, Sebastian,” Will replied. The venom in his tone would render the man dust if his Energy could locate the man at this instant.
Porthos shrugged. “Whatever you say. It’s a shame, really. With all that Energy, you’d think your kids could be put to better use.” He fixed each member of the group with a pointed stare. “It appears we’ve hit an impasse here. The traitors have won the war. I will concede that fact. I could not raise an army of loyal supporters to either the Leader or to me if I so desired at this point. Your slick little medicine apparently reversed the Leader’s imprint from the minds of our people. I doubt I’d be able to undo the damage.”
Adam scowled. “So you figured out what it does?”
Porthos snorted. “Of course, fool. I lost my hand, not my mind. I watched far too many loyal Aliomenti, including that utter fool Athos, drift away from loyalty after its application.” He smirked at them. “Oh, and the lot of you explained its purpose quite openly when you thought me captured and defeated. I suspect you won’t make that mistake again, will you?”
Will tilted his head. “He never imprinted you, did he? He left you alone.”
“The Leader is a wise man, Stark. Complete loyalty has its benefits… but carried to an extreme becomes a self-defeating proposition. He didn’t need to imprint me because I recognized the intelligence of his goals and wanted to be part of their achievement. The Leader saw no need to burden my mind when it wasn’t necessary. It served a secondary purpose, though. As the only one able to voice thoughts in opposition to his own—if I so chose, of course—that decision also provided him with someone he could share ideas with, get honest feedback. While I’d never voice open opposition to his ideas, of course—not in public, not without consent, because his patience would only stretch so far—my immediate reactions, facial expressions, and the like would give him additional information and allow him to make alterations. I could, you might say, emote freely.” He waved the sword casually, and the flat edge hit Gena in the face. “To answer your implied question: your medicine had no effect on me because there was no imprint there to cure.”
“Where are you?” Hope asked.
Porthos laughed. “Come now… do you really think I’ll tell you where I am? It would ruin all of the fun of this moment.”
Adam’s gaze remained fixed on Gena’s eyes. “What is your purpose in doing this, Hunter?”
The sword jabbed at the screen. “I like you. You don’t waste time with silly questions. You’re… Adam, right? But you’re not the Adam who was the second best-known traitor to the Leader. No, you’re just the demonic spawn, born of not one but two Oath breakers based upon earlier conversations. I must say, Adam, that you bear the likeness and voice of your father… and the lack of trustworthiness of both parents.” He sneered. “I’m quite glad they’re both dead.”
Adam stiffened at the reminder of Eva’s recent passing, and his father’s departure centuries earlier. He didn’t move his eyes. “I thank you for the compliment, Hunter,” Adam replied. His voice was like ice. “But you’ve failed to address my question.”
The Hunter began pacing the room. “What is my purpose, you ask? Well, as I said, that’s a very good question. The loyalty of those away from the Island remains with the Leader. I might be able to convince them that he conferred upon me the mantle of Leader in the event of his unfortunate passing. Who better to lead efforts to continue his noble work of ensuring Aliomenti dominion over humans and all who oppose our goals?” He paused and glanced around. “But you’ve already thought of that, haven’t you? You’ve cut off my email access to the outside world. And your numbers are far greater than we’d ever supposed. No doubt your reserves are off with that medicine, skulking about under rocks and in shadows, trapping my people and turning them away from our cause with trickery and lies.”
Hope glared at him. “It took you until now to figure that out?” She shook her head. “And they say you’re the smart one.”
“Silence, woman!” Porthos’ eyes raged. He returned his gaze to Adam and Will. “What do I want? I want a serving of irony on a silver platter. In other words, what I want from you is what you’ve claimed to always want from us.” He glanced down at his reflection in the sword. “I want to be left alone. I want you to leave me be. I want you to promise that you’ll never search for me. I want you to promise me that if ever you do cross my path, you’ll keep walking and not acknowledge my presence.” He glanced at Gena, casually waving the sword over her restrained form. “And since this creature is of some apparent value to you, she lives so long as I get what I want.”
“What if we don’t agree?” Will asked. “How do we know you’ll honor the agreement, and not kill her the instant you leave this Island?”
Porthos snorted. “Agreement? I have all the power in the negotiation, Stark. This female is clearly important to you for some reason. And she’s quite important to your double-Oath-breaker traitor friend as well. In fact…” He knelt down and looked into Gena’s green eyes, then stroked her jet black hair with the stump where his right hand used to be. He turned around. “She’s related to you, isn’t she, Stark? What is she, a cousin or something?” He squinted at the screen, and then back. Then he laughed. “She’s your sister, isn’t she? I thought you didn’t have a sister?” He shrugged. “No matter. Family doesn’t matter. Power does. And I have it because you choose to give it to me by caring for others too deeply. You’ve ignored the wisdom of the Oaths. Don’t form strong relationships, for they’ll control you.” He gazed at them with a look of near pity. None of them believed Porthos possessed sufficient compassion to offer such a look.
He set the sword down on a table and began to pace in front of the camera. “Let me explain how it will be, Will Stark. I will secure this female away and make sure she’s… taken care of.” Adam flinched, and Will risked a quick glance. Adam’s mouth was so tightly clenched Will thought the man’s teeth would crack. “You, of course, will have no idea where she is in the future any more than you do now. But your sense of duty will force you to act so that nothing awful happens to her. Thus, Will Stark, we both know that, despite your blustery protestations, you will agree to my terms. In return for my generosity in ensuring this thing lives, I will be given free rein to live where I please. If I request something from your Alliance, you will provide it to me with no hesitation and without question. That will include money, transportation, and the like. Am I clear?” He snorted with derisive laughter. “I can’t believe we didn’t think of this earlier. Kidnap one of your precious and vulnerable members of the Alliance and hide her away, not in our prison, but somewhere else, somewhere you can’t find. The power it gives us… that it gives me…” He started laughing at Will, nearly doubling over as the moment seized him. “It’s like… it’s like… you’re a worthless, Energy-less human now Sta—”
The flat side of the sword crashed into his skull, and Porthos collapsed to the ground, unconscious.
Sarah stood before them on the screen, Porthos’ discarded sword in her hand. “I don’t know about the rest of you,” Sarah told them. “But I was getting very tired of listening to that man talk.”
Adam’s jaw unclenched. They all breathed a sigh of relief. Hope bent down to Fil, letting him know that Gena was safe and Porthos captured, and Fil sat up instantly, staring at the screen, a look of deep pride filling his eyes as he saw those responsible for seizing victory.
Anna moved into the room and wrapped Porthos’ unconscious form in her own Energy and nanos. Sarah began pulling the scraps of netting free from Gena, wrapping them around Porthos as she did so.
Will heaved a deep sigh before turning back to Adam.
“Now, at last, it’s over.”
XLIV
GENA SAT ON THE GROUND at Headquarters Plaza with the survivors. She glanced at Porthos’ unconscious form and shivered.
“Things were horribly dull at the Cavern,” she explained. “I felt horrible being there. Most of the people there had no interest in leaving. They were cleaning up and starting repairs, and the old Aliomenti were familiarizing themselves with what happened. But I just couldn’t stay knowing that each of you were at risk.”
“Understandable,” Will told her. He glanced at Hope. With the cessation of fighting, he’d expected a return to her normal jovial manner, but she remained subdued. He didn’t know whether she remained saddened by the loss of life, Angel’s suffering, or still felt the effects of Arthur’s mysterious final words. But she remained steadfast in her refusal to discuss the matter.
“I moved to Eden through the portal,” Gena continued. “I walked outside and found that two of the humans had located a severed hand.” She shot a glance at Porthos once more. “It was clear it had been buried, but they had found it. I suspect local wildlife caught the scent and dug it from the ground.” She wrinkled her nose. “I offered to dispose of it, wrapped it in nanos and made my way beyond the transport tent. I knelt down to dig a hole to bury the hand again… and then he threw that net over me.”
“We never sensed a teleportation effort reflective of someone moving from Eden to Headquarters, though,” Fil said. He sat with Sarah, speaking to Gena, but his eyes remained full of deep concern as they flicked periodically toward Angel. His sister tried to sit apart from the others, but Anna refused to leave her alone.
“He found one of the remotes that activated the teleportation machines here,” Gena explained. “He didn’t know what it was at first, but figured he’d take his chances. I suspect it worked out far better than he’d dreamed.”
“That explains it,” Adam said. “We detected nothing because he’d left the Island, but not via teleportation. I presume he returned with you in the same manner?”
Gena nodded. “He talked about his strategy while he was setting everything up here. He’d realized all of you ceased seeing him as a threat once he’d been injected with the medicine, but he didn’t know why. The conversation helped him realize what changes the medicine initiated. He didn’t believe it, but remained quiet and tried to act sympathetic when the less pleasant events of the day unfolded. When Athos arrived and let his guilt over his current and past actions drive him to suicide, he realized he’d found his chance. He’d prefer death to letting us win, and the risk we’d not grant his wish of walking on his own was one he thought worth taking. Once he knew Will had left his vantage point and could no longer see the two Hunters, he got up and moved back into the building to hide. The battle had turned in our favor by then, and he knew he was in trouble and had to leave. He needed a new plan.”
“A hostage,” Fil said.
Gena nodded. “Exactly. He’d figured out that we’d teleported the humans living here away somehow without the use of Energy. He knew that if he could activate that technology, he’d have a chance to get away… or better, locate a hostage usable as negotiating leverage. Once he realized that, he snuck into his private quarters at Headquarters and grabbed a net. Turned out it was test samples that were scraps, but still very effective. He put them in a bag and he was ready to leave the Island when the opportunity presented itself.”
“But why would the transporter machine work?” Will asked. “The machine would only work on those who’d touched the palm readers here.”
“He did touch the machine, though,” Gena noted, and Will nodded, remembering. “But we’d only set the machines up to use the signature in that nanogel the first time. The fighters on the Island didn’t have those signatures. He found a remote, likely one that fell from someone’s pocket after the gravity fiasco, and with it traveled to Eden.” She grimaced. “And that’s where he found me.”
Fil’s face fell at her words. “I apologize for freezing in the moment. But seeing you there was…”
“Seeing me there was a memory of the worst day of your life, Fil.” Sarah squeezed Fil’s arm, and Anna offered him a generous smile. “You’d have come around given enough time. Luckily, you didn’t need to.” She glanced at Sarah and Anna. “Thank you. But… how did you figure out where we were? He made every effort to mask where he was, and you certainly had no reason to think I’d made it to Headquarters.”
“We got lucky,” Anna admitted. “We made a critical assumption, namely that since there was no evidence of teleportation, Porthos hadn’t gotten to the Cavern or even to Eden. We also, unknowingly, made an assumption that Porthos hadn’t gotten an image of Gena in his mind from Adam and managed to use Energy to make another Aliomenti look like her.”
Everyone sat up straighter. “Wow, that thought never crossed my mind,” Fil admitted.
“It didn’t cross mine until later, honestly,” Anna replied. “Not until we got the net off Aunt Gena and her familiar Energy signal rebuilt.” She grimaced before continuing. “But as I said, we decided that the available evidence was that Gena came here, rather than Porthos going elsewhere to capture her. That was wrong, but it kept us in the right place. We figured he’d probably avoid Energy usage for travel in any form, and had heard from Ian that there were no missing flying craft. While he could have gotten on the monorail again, or taken a ground car to the village, we surmised he’d want to stay here while we all ran off elsewhere looking for him. Reverse psychology. We’d initially figured he’d want to stay here because it was the most likely place, and because he’d not want to be where we’d guess, he’d go elsewhere. He left—briefly—but returned here once he had his captive.”
“We were the first ones to happen by the screen,” Sarah said. “We saw Gena, and Porthos saw us. The lapse in the amount of time it took him to respond to us was another clue… he was responding without the slightest delay, so we had yet another clue that he was close. He ordered us to get the rest of you. We walked off to do so, and we did. But we went inside the building instead of returning to the screen.”
“Mom was the key,” Anna said. “She can move around in absolute silence… and without Energy, Porthos can’t sense her at all. We looked at the directory in the lobby, found his office, and moved outside. His office is pretty heavily Shielded against Energy loss, but it’s not perfect. I could trace him once we got closer, and his emotions told me when he was focused on the screen and not the door. Once he started bragging, and put the sword down, Mom went in without a sound.”
“How did it feel to knock him out cold like that?” Angel asked.
“It felt… really good,” Sarah admitted.
Everyone laughed.
Will glanced around the group. “We need to decide what to do with… the final weapon.”
An uncomfortable silence developed.
“I’m not sure I follow,” Angel replied at last. “I thought we’d only use it if things were going poorly.” She spread her hands. “We won.”
Will glanced at Hope. “That’s true. But… I wonder if our experiences show that we still need to activate the weapon. It’s no longer a weapon meant to end this war; it’s now a technology that will prevent a situation like this from ever developing again. If we activate the device now, no one else will ever need to suffer through the events of the past few days.”
There was silence once more as each pondered this concept.
Fil finally looked at his father. “It’s… this is not a decision to be undertaken lightly, Dad.”
“No, it isn’t,” Hope replied. “And the majority would no doubt argue against it, including the majority of who weren’t in any of the battle zones. We need to decide now if we’re going to use the device. If we go back to Eden and the Cavern, it will never be used.”
“Do we have the right to make that decision for everyone, though?” Gena asked quietly.
Will sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitte
d. “We were entrusted to make a decision to activate the weapon if the battle situation called for it. I just… I know we’ve defeated Arthur and our last known threat has been neutralized.” He glanced at Porthos’ bound, unconscious form. “But it only takes one person to become the menace we’ve just defeated. Twice, if you count Porthos’ short reign of terror.” He grimaced. “Have we truly won if there’s a chance something like this can happen again? If others will be faced with the horrors and losses we’ve experienced in such a short period of time?” He sighed. “I don’t know if we have the right, Gena. But I think we have the responsibility to make the decision and act upon it.”
Silence reigned once more.
It was Anna who finally spoke. “I think we should use it. The device won’t end the ability to do good in the world. But it will make it much more difficult for the type of evil we’ve just faced to rise to such a level of prominence once more.”
Fil smiled. “I agree with my brilliant daughter.”
Anna beamed.
The discussions continued among the survivors. But over the course of the next thirty minutes, each agreed with Anna.
The device was activated when a series of bands worn by a select group—who remained alive—were activated in tandem, using a complex swiping gesture unlikely to occur naturally. They each rolled up a sleeve and detached their bands, laying them upon the ground in front of them.
Angel, Fil, Hope, Gena, and Adam swiped their devices.
They’d left it to Will, their founder, their patriarch, their chosen leader, to perform the final swipe.
He had second thoughts. Activating the device would change his life, all of their lives, in ways he couldn’t yet imagine. But he’d meant what he’d told them. Those changes, he believed, paled in comparison to the devastation surrounding them. He hesitated, but his eyes found the tear-streaked face of his daughter.
If they’d activated this device sooner, he realized, Angel’s husband would still be alive.
Convergence Page 27
