Exiles

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Exhausted from their ordeal, they lay down on the lumpy cot after a while, snuggling together for comfort and warmth, and actually dozed off.

  There were so many thoughts flowing through Claire’s mind, she wasn’t actually aware of having fallen asleep until a sound awakened her.

  “Psst!”

  Frowning, Claire peered over Maddie’s shoulder uneasily and discovered that there was a dark figure hovering at the small window in the door.

  “Claire!”

  She recognized his voice then, even though it was whispered through the narrow tray door near the middle of the door. Her heart thundering with excitement, Claire clambered over her sister and moved to the door, getting to her knees and peering at Nick through the slot. “Nick?”

  “Oh my god! Babe! I can’t believe those bastards have you locked in here!”

  Claire sucked in a hopeful breath. “Can you get us out?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” Madelyn demanded over Claire’s shoulder, having been roused by the whispering.

  Claire glanced at Maddie and then at Nick’s tight expression. “Maddie—this is Nick—Dominick DiCarlo. The guy I was telling you about? My … uh …” She cleared her throat, not at all comfortable claiming him as a boyfriend even though she was pretty sure Nick considered he was. She looked at Nick. “My sister, Madelyn.”

  Madelyn and Nick exchanged a look that made Claire’s belly tighten with uneasiness. Filled with distrust and dislike on both sides, the bristling exchange didn’t augur well for a happy future family relationship. “What are you doing here, anyway? You were part of this, weren’t you?”

  Ok, that explained Maddie’s hostility and Claire felt her own hackles rise. Shock washed over her. “Oh my god! You were one of the men ….!”

  Nick’s lips tightened. “I didn’t know ….” He shook his head. “I don’t have time to try to explain it. The guard will be back any second. I just wanted to let you know I’m here for you, Babe. I’m going to get you out of this fucking mess! I don’t know how … yet … but somehow. Hopefully before we get to Gitmo,” he muttered.

  “Gitmo!” Madelyn practically screamed. “Gitmo? Y’all are taking us to that … horrible place for terrorists? Omg! We are so fucked!”

  “Shh! Shh! For chrissake be quiet! You get me thrown in with you there won’t be anybody outside to try to help you get out!”

  Maddie glared at him. “I’m supposed to be fucking calm after that?” she hissed. “After the pure fucking hell you’ve put me and Claire through, we aren’t supposed to get hysterical?”

  Nick let out an irritated huff. “I have to go … before I get caught. I’m going to try to get you out, maybe pull some strings. If that doesn’t work …. I’ll think of something. Just hang on, Babe.”

  Claire abruptly felt like crying. He was willing to risk everything to help them.

  And she’d just spent over a week fucking Dante’s brains out and enjoying it to the fullest!

  She was such a bitch!

  Swallowing with an effort, she nodded, but Nick had already left.

  She exchanged a long look with Madelyn. Even in the dim light she could see Madelyn was pale with fear—as deep down scared as she was.

  She licked her fear dried lips. “Nick will get us out. I know he will.”

  Madelyn looked unconvinced. “I’m putting my money on that alien dude.”

  The comment surprised a snort of laughter out of Claire. “You’re going to have to quit hanging around college kids! Alien dude?”

  Madelyn released a sound halfway between a snort of laughter and a sob. “We are so fucked, Claire! What in the hell are we going to do? What the hell is going on?”

  * * * *

  Dante could not shake the sense of uneasiness that had swept through him when he saw the military men and ships in the bay. They were Claire and her sister’s people. He should not have felt uneasy about what appeared to be a rescue attempt by them.

  But all that he could think of was that Claire’s warrior had come to reclaim her.

  Well, the bastard was not likely to get her even if he was among the warriors on the ships and had come specifically to collect her! Unless human technology had advanced far beyond what he knew of and the things that he had seen since he had been awakened they would never breach the hull of the fortress.

  The camp where Claire’s sister was staying was another matter altogether. There was no protection there at all.

  But then they should not need it if he was correct and the military was there to rescue Claire.

  He could not think of any other reason for them to be here, on foreign shores—when this was not their country—unless Claire’s sister had sent for them to help her retrieve her sister. Or the one Claire called Nick had brought them to help him take her back.

  Unfortunately, he could not substantiate his suspicions from the sky. There were many men on these ships and their thoughts were a cacophony that could not be divided into the separate strands so that he could capture the thoughts of a single individual.

  Doing his best to dismiss his uneasiness and anger, he guided his craft toward the encampment where Madelyn was staying. He had not even reached the beach when he captured her frightened, confused thoughts.

  She was in trouble!

  His belly tightened. There was no comfort in discovering that his uneasiness had not been misplaced.

  He focused on her, but by the readings there was an individual too close to her for him to transport her from the land to the fortress in the sea. He watched for many moments, thinking they might separate … and then it dawned upon him why they were so close. The man was holding her captive.

  The moment that thought congealed, he changed the settings on the transporter and beamed the pair aboard, taking advantage of the warrior’s shock to punch him out. Madelyn seemed as stunned as the warrior, but he had no intention of allowing her enough time to calm herself and begin to demand to be returned. Claire wanted her sister safe in the fortress and that was where he intended to put her.

  The moment he had removed her blindfold and the bindings, therefore, he strode back to the controls and transported her to the apartment where Claire should have been waiting for her.

  She was not, but it did not matter. They would find one another. They were both safe and he could turn his mind to his own mission—discovering what had happened to Gaius to turn him into a berserker.

  * * * *

  Nick stared up at the bunk above his head, but his mind wasn’t on the view. Nor was it on the fear such as he’d rarely known that churned in his belly, making him feel vaguely ill and as taut as a bow string.

  In fact he was barely aware of his surroundings at all and he’d managed, for the moment, to tuck the fear away in that distant part of his mind he used to compartmentalize his emotions so that he could act upon reason, logic, orders when called upon to do so without the interference of emotions. His mind was turned inward, but he was focused on playing back everything that had happened since the night he’d gone down in the sinkhole over and over and over.

  It was more than just an exercise in memory recall, however.

  Somewhere in his memories, he was convinced, there were enough puzzle pieces to figure out what the hell he had landed in the middle of.

  He didn’t know what they had in mind for Claire and her sister, but it wasn’t looking good.

  It seemed crucial to their continued good health that he figure out what was going on.

  He hadn’t gotten anywhere when he’d tried to talk to his commanding officer and it had gone from bad to far worse when he’d tried to go over his head and speak to the Admiral.

  What the hell had they gotten themselves in to?

  It sounded like whoever was really in charge of the operation had suggested it would be best if they disappeared.

  As in ‘ceased to exist’.

  He was very afraid that that was why they were steaming
toward Gitmo even now.

  He had tried to shake that thought, to dismiss it as ludicrous and paranoid, but he was no closer to reaching a state where he could. He was rapidly approaching a place where his suspicions didn’t sound ludicrous or paranoid at all.

  Because he knew that fucking alien birdman was tied up in this mess … somehow.

  He’d suspected something was going down from the moment the bastard revealed what he really was, shifting from what at least appeared to be a catholic priest to a birdman right in front of him and taking flight.

  The mission they’d just executed seemed to prove it—in spades!

  Nobody was talking about it. They’d been ordered to forget anything they’d seen, but if they hadn’t just spent the last couple of hours collecting alien technology he was a monkey’s uncle!

  It damned sure wasn’t anything stolen from Uncle Sam, regardless of that tale they’d cooked up!

  Because it wasn’t just the place that looked ancient! Everything in it, everything they’d collected looked ancient. The scrolls were so delicate they’d had to handle them with great care to keep them from crumbling to dust! They were going to be damned lucky if any of that stuff made it to whoever was waiting for it without turning to dust.

  The artifacts predated the good old U. S. of A. by centuries if not thousands of years, he was sure. He suspected they predated humanity—at least in its modern form. They might have been swinging from tree limbs when that city was built and the artifacts they’d just collected housed there, but he didn’t believe any human had had anything to do with the construction or the technology they’d found.

  Claire and her sister had found.

  Well, he supposed the bitchy sister had found it. Claire had said she’d joined her sister on a dig in Kuwait.

  How the fuck was he supposed to know they were the mission he’d been sent on, he thought with sudden angry resentment, trying to dismiss the guilt he felt for having anything to do with what had gone down?

  Claire’s sister hated him for it and he was afraid Claire wouldn’t be far behind in hating him.

  He had to make it up to her … somehow! He had to figure out a way to save them from what was coming down the pike! He had to prove he wasn’t part of this—not knowingly.

  Whatever this was!

  * * * *

  Dante heard the sounds of battle long before he managed to reach the gathering room of the fortress. His heart had quickened and with that he had also quickened his step, but he had tried to convince himself that he was not hearing actual battle.

  He had not succeeded. Which was just as well because the scene he came upon was neither an exercise nor an exhibition or a friendly competition.

  The room itself was in shambles—tables and chairs overturned and game pieces and betting chips strewn in every direction. Ranged around the outer perimeter of the room were at least two dozen angels. In the center of the room there were two identical angels hacking away at one another with clear intent to destroy.

  At least one seemed clearly intent on destroying the other.

  Dante stood watching the two waltz around the room for some moments and finally moved closer to the nearest angel. “What is happening?”

  The angel, whom he did not recognize, glanced at him and then shrugged. “No fucking clue.”

  Irritation flared in Dante. “What started it?”

  Again the angel shrugged. “Not a fucking clue.”

  Dante was tempted to throttle the man.

  “Daelin—the one with the crazed look on his face—beamed in and instantly attacked his twin—his brother, Cristian,” the stranger continued after a moment. “Maybe they had a disagreement earlier but Cristian damned sure was not acting as if he had an issue when we were playing cards and he had not said anything about such a thing. He seemed to be as caught off guard as the rest of us, but he has warned us off, saying that he will handle this.

  “I do not know about the others, but I am not going to honor that if it looks that Daelin will get the best of Cristian because it appears to me that he has a clear intent to kill his brother if he can find an opening.”

  “Fuck!” Dante exclaimed. “I would not doubt that for a moment! I have just recently had a similar encounter.”

  The man turned to study Dante more fully. “I am Galt. I do not recognize you. You are new here?”

  “I am old here,” Dante responded dryly. “I have only just been released from a prolonged stasis.”

  The angel’s brows rose. “It must have been a very long stasis indeed, for I have been here a thousand ternuns.”

  “I am Dante.”

  The angel’s eyes widened at that and he flicked a quick look in Dante’s direction. “Dante of Atlantis? We had thought that you had perished with your wom—the people there.”

  A knot of anguish formed in Dante’s throat at the reminder. He swallowed hard against it, forcing the memories clamoring to escape to the back of his mind. “They perished.”

  Galt nodded, but he had not once during the conversation taken his eyes off of the fight in progress. “They released you when the humans found Atlantis then?”

  “It did not happen quite that way … but, yes.”

  “I believe Daelin may be tiring,” Galt muttered instead of responding to Dante’s comment.

  “If they have been at it less than an hour,” Dante responded, “I very much doubt that.”

  Galt frowned. “You said you had a similar encounter? I had not heard that you had a brother here.”

  “It was not similar in that way.”

  Galt apparently saw an opening. He abruptly shot forward.

  His timing was not perfect, despite his efforts. He did not manage to relieve Daelin of his weapon, but he did manage to manacle his arms at his sides. As soon as he rushed forward, others poured away from the walls and joined the fray. In a matter of minutes there were enough angels surrounding the combatants that they had managed to wrest the sword from Daelin and bind him.

  He was not subdued, Dante saw, anymore than Gaius had been. He was simply overwhelmed.

  He found a comfortable chair, righted it, and settled to wait for the excitement to die down sufficiently for a discussion. Daelin was hauled away to be secured in the containment room and his brother, Cristian, taken to the med center to attend his wounds.

  “Do not put him in the same containment as Gaius,” he called after them as they headed from the gathering room. “There is no telling what might happen, but I am certain it is not something we could wish for.”

  After staring at him hard for a long moment, the jailers left with their prisoner. The angels who remained, moved around the room righting tables and chairs and finally settled. “What has happened to Gaius?” Commander Thadius demanded once they had restored the room to order.

  Dante shook his head. “Would that I knew. He attacked me in the Bay Fortress where I was staying. He showed no sign of recognizing me even though we had long been friends and had, in fact, been brought here at the same time. He did seem intent upon hacking me to pieces.”

  “You argued?” Thadius asked sharply.

  “There was no discussion at all,” Dante responded. “He appeared and he attacked.”

  A rumble of voices verified that the most recent attack at least appeared to be identical to the encounter he had had.

  “I was actually hoping that I might find answers here,” Dante responded after a few moments discussion among the angels. “I examined Gaius when I had managed to subdue him, ran every test I could think of and there doesn’t actually appear to be anything at all wrong with him. And yet ….”

  “Everything is wrong,” Cristian finished for him, entering the gathering room in time to hear a part of the discussion. “We have run tests on Daelin, as well—Well, that thing! It is not my brother! I will tell you that!”

  “It is a cyborg made to look like him?” one of the others asked sharply.

  “It is the shell of his body and the mind of �
� I do not know. It seems mindless. And yet the computer says that his brain functions are normal.”

  “I would say much the same about Gaius—he looks like the angel I knew but that is all.”

  “This is the gods' doing!” Cristian growled.

  “We do not know that!” Thadius countered. “We cannot jump to dangerous conclusions here!”

  “They sent for him! And he returns like this and we cannot blame this on them?”

  Dante sat up abruptly. “The gods sent for him? To what purpose?”

  “It was only to be a routine adjustment to the implants,” Thadius responded before Cristian could.

  Dante frowned. “I checked that. It seemed to be functioning correctly,” he responded slowly.

  “I was not implying that they had done something to the implants,” Cristian said, “but now I have to wonder at it. Gaius was one of those summoned to report for the implant adjustment.”

  * * * *

  “I think it was the gods,” Claire said.

  Madelyn stared at her for a long moment. “You know it totally blows my mind every time you make that kind of statement. It sounds so … I don’t know. Archaic. Bizarre. Take your pick! I mean, yes, what you told me makes complete sense. These beings would have a name for themselves just like we do, I suppose. And it isn’t too farfetched to think that the word in our language—languages—came from them—just like so many of the words we use today arose from a different language and culture than our own. And it’s completely believable that the human interpretation of the name they called themselves came to mean ‘all powerful beings and creator’. But I’m having a LOT of trouble shifting gears. Every time you say gods and angels I think of our concept of god and angels.”

  “Ok, the aliens—the ones without wings. They seem to be in charge. Not that Dante spent a lot of time explaining things to me, but I got that impression from what he did say.”

  Madelyn waggled her eyebrows at her younger sister. “I can just imagine what Dante did spend his time doing ….”

  Claire felt her face heat. She struggled to pretend she had no idea what Maddie was implying, but it was a lost cause.

  “Oh don’t waste your time trying to convince me the two of you haven’t been bumping uglies!” Maddie said with mock irritation. “I know better.”