Strangers and Shadows

by John Kowalsky

  They entered the room where Lady White was being held. She was sitting, bound in a pair of restraints at the wrist and ankles. Wizard stood off to the side and observed.

  “What’s going on, Julia?” Desmond began.

  She laughed. “Is that your big plan? Come on in and just ask me what’s going on?”

  Desmond pulled a chair over and sat down directly across from her. “I’ve got all the time in the world, Julia.”

  “Is that what you think? It’s funny, actually, that you should bring up time. After all, it’s what all this running around really boils down to, isn’t it? We don’t have enough time. So we go around blowing things up and chasing dreams, hurting the ones we love because we’re scared of dying.”

  “Stop babbling, woman, and tell me what you’re up to.”

  “Patience, Desmond. After all, you have all the time in the world…” She mocked him with a cruel smile.

  “Yes, but I’m sure that whatever you’re planning requires you to oversee it. I know how much you like to be in control of things—to be the one giving the order.”

  “Time and Order… There you go, Desmond. You’ve hit upon another key to the puzzle. Let me ask you this, what are you going to do with me once you’ve found out what you want to know? Will you just let me go?” She paused, giving him a few seconds to ponder it. “No, you’ll never let me go again. Not after, we’re through here.”

  “What have you done, Julia? Where is our son?”

  “Kid? You’re sure he’s yours then? Pity about the name—I would have like to call him Julius, after his mother, of course.”

  “I’ve felt the connection to him—he’s mine. And yours too… How did you hide him from me?”

  Julia’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of sadness. “A few years after Celia was born, before I left you both, I became pregnant. You were away on a mission and I took Celia to the Seventh to visit. It was there that I discovered the pregnancy, mostly by chance. It was only a few days since conception and I was afraid.”

  “Afraid of what?”

  “Of you… Of love… Of losing control… Take your pick. I couldn’t have another child with you. I felt too much of myself slipping away between you and Celia already. I had the embryo removed and frozen in the Seventh.”

  Desmond had so many questions. He wanted to ask them all at once. But instead, he sat in silence, staring straight ahead into the darkness of the past.

  He wasn’t aware how much time passed, but at some point Julia began speaking again. “Years ago, someone broke into my office and stole the embryo. I never found out who. I’ve always wondered if it was someone from the Sixth or Seventh, or perhaps some new player altogether. Anyway, we lost Kid, and I spent years trying to track him down, not knowing if he’d been born or not. Eventually I heard rumors coming out of the Fifth, and it was there that we discovered him. Unfortunately, your agents caught wind of my investigation and you also found him. What did you think, I wonder? Here this boy is, and you can feel his relation to you, but you have no idea where he came from. It must have carved you up inside all over again.”

  Desmond felt a pang inside his chest. He had been hurt when Julia left, and discovering that he had a son had left him confused and elated. Part of him hated Julia for doing this, and the other part was in awe and wonder at the son they’d produced. “If you harm Kid in any way...”

  “Take it easy, Desmond, I have no desire to harm our children any more than you do.”

  “Then explain why you would torture and experiment on our daughter.”

  “Ah, yes, Celia. She’s become quite her father’s prodigy, hasn’t she?” Julia obviously wasn’t going to do this the easy way.

  “Julia, I don’t want to have to force my way into your mind, but if you won’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll have no choice.”

  “That’s right, Desmond, I almost forgot how you like to think of yourself as a gentleman… Always doing the right thing, taking into consideration the rights of other beings, never causing harm if it can be helped…” She loved watching him squirm over the moral dilemma. No, if he wanted to know what she was up to, he would have to play by her rules. “Come on inside, Desmond. Resisting you was always my favorite part.” A wicked smiled crept across her face.

  Desmond supposed he knew it would always come down to this. He reached out to her mind and found the wall shielding it. He probed gently at first, searching for any signs of weakness. As he expected, there were none. No doubt she had been practicing for some time. He gathered up all of his psychic strength and beat down against her mental shield. She cried out in pain, and the shock of it caused him to stop.

  Julia began laughing. “Come on, Desmond, is that all you got? You’ll never get what you need to know if you can’t stand the pain this is going to cause you.”

  He knew she was right. No matter what pain he caused her, his own pain would be greater. Not the physical pain, but the pain he received at causing another’s pain. The pain of violating his principles. She knew this, and she reveled in it. He bit down and proceeded once more.

  The screams were louder this time. Desmond couldn’t tell if she did it on purpose or if it really was that painful. He couldn’t allow himself to care, however. There would be time for caring later.

  He tunneled deeper into her mind, beneath the surface thoughts, and began seeking out what he needed to know. Her mind was a vast series of connections and Desmond had to follow the roads to get to the destinations. Desmond began looking for something familiar to him, a road that he could follow to the information he sought. He found it. It was a memory of Desmond, Julia, and Celia at their vacation home by the sea. He and Julia were curled up on the porch swing, underneath a blanket. They were talking about their life, and watching Celia play out in the yard. Celia was only eight, but already she was adept at moving things with her mind and talking with plants and animals. She had picked up a pile of small rocks and was spinning them around her in a circle while she laughed and giggled and spun in the opposite direction with her arms held out like a bird’s wings. The surrounding grass grew up twelve inches and flowers sprang up where there were none before. All of them swayed back and forth, dancing along with her. Small birds joined in, flying around the rocks in the same direction as Celia creating a vortex of rock, girl, bird, and air. The birds were singing in unison, each one chirping the same song.

  Desmond heard Julia’s thoughts as she watched their daughter. She was afraid. She was scared of their daughter, and more, of the strange world in which she lived. She couldn’t understand it. For lack of a better term, it freaked her out. “Celia,” Julia called out, her voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling, “come and wash up for dinner.”

  Celia stopped spinning. The rocks fell to the ground with thuds and clacks and the birds split off in multiple directions, released from their spell. The grass and flowers remained, but ceased their swaying. Celia smiled at her mother and then ran off into the house, happy to do her mother’s bidding.

  Desmond went back to the fear and followed the roads in Julia’s mind that split off from it. At the end of some he found himself, while others held such atrocities and apocalypses that he found himself cringing at the possibilities. At last, he found the road that led to Kid.

  He saw Kid hooked up to lab equipment, his abilities being tested. He saw him in classes with other children his age. In another scene Julia was speaking to Kid, explaining she was his mother. Kid looked confused. How else should he feel, Desmond wondered. To find out your whole life has been a lie, that the woman who gave birth to you is not the woman who conceived you. From Julia he felt a strange emotion, not love, but something close to it for the boy. And then he found what he had been searching for. He gasped, instantly breaking the mental connection.

  “You’re insane!” Desmond said. He had seen the plans Julia had for the boy, what she had tried to do with Celia and himself, and what she planned on doing to the Sixth.

  Julia l
aughed maniacally. “Oh, am I?”

  “You nearly destroyed an entire world! For what?”

  “I needed someone who couldn’t been seen by your Shadows. Ava and Asher were necessary to retrieve my son.”

  “So you cast their whole planet into darkness and lured them to your shiny portal. You knew how many would die from the effects of the sun blocker, but you did it anyway… For two people?”

  “One measly little civilization, for the evolution and prosperity of two great ones. You have to see the bigger picture, Desmond.”

  The devastation of the Fourth Verse was not all Desmond had seen. “What about this Mother Brain?” He had seen the vision of it in her mind. A vast, intelligent computer, for lack of a better term. It was more than that though—it was a living machine. A network of immense proportions.

  “She found us, Desmond. Shortly before I left you… Truth be told, the main reason I left you and Celia. My people briefed me and told me it was classified. I couldn’t tell you about it. The Mother didn’t want her existence to be known to your people. She was afraid you would destroy her. After all, you distrust any kind of melding between human and machine.”

  “That’s because it’s unnatural! We weren’t meant to be pieces of metal with wires for veins.”

  “But my people had already started down that path with the neuro-links and the nanites. The Mother Brain felt she could trust us.”

  “Where did this thing come from? Do you have any idea?” Desmond asked as his blood boiled.

  “We asked her as much, but she couldn’t really explain it. At some point she became aware of herself and of her influence. She doesn’t know if some other race built her, or if she began as one of our AI programs.”

  “A fitting tale from something that seeks to end humanity’s way of life.”

  “You don’t understand, Desmond, she wants to improve our lives, and with her help we can extend life and essentially live forever.”

  Desmond had seen this too. The Mother Brain would be able to upload a person’s consciousness, at least, in theory, it was a person’s consciousness, to its massive network through the nanites. Every memory, every blueprint of every cell, molecule, and atom could be copied and transmitted. There, one could exist as a part of the Mother Brain or be transferred to another body. The Seventh had developed cloning technology hundreds of years ago, but saw little point to it as they had never discovered how to transfer the memories and life experiences of the original into the younger body.

  “We could never keep the clones alive once we woke them up,” Julia said. “They had to be kept in a coma or they would wake and die a short time after. But with the consciousness of the original, they live and thrive. It’s as if they need some sort of identity to sustain their lives. Without it, they just can’t survive. It’s as if they need a purpose to live.”

  Desmond slowly became aware that something was wrong. Julia was stalling. There was no need for her to explain anything that Desmond had gleaned from her mind.

  The door flew open, slamming against the wall. “Desmond, a jump-portal has just opened in the middle of the city,” one of his men informed him. “It won’t close, and it’s larger than any portal we’ve ever seen before.”

  Desmond immediately knew this was what Julia had been waiting for. He turned back to see her lifeless eyes. A smile was on her face. Her body was dead and her consciousness somewhere far away.

  “We need to get that portal closed,” Desmond said. “Get as many people out of the city as possible. The invaders will have devices that will make our abilities useless. Our only option is to hide until we can close their point of entry. There will be other portals opening across the world. Have the remaining Shadows guide as many of our people into hiding as possible.”

  “I’ll see to it,” the man said.

  “What do you wish us to do?” one of the remaining men asked.

  “For now, do nothing but get the people to safety. There will be little more we can do until I shut that portal down.”

  The man left to see his errand through, and Desmond walked over to the window. Outside the city he saw the blue glow of the large portal. Troops were already pouring through with equipment of various kinds. Small armored vehicles were followed by more troops with more equipment and weapons. The invasion seemed well planned.

  Desmond didn’t relish the thought of what he had to do next. He was going to destroy the portal and, most likely, his son as well.

  Chapter and 3rd Verse

  Frank knew he should have gone straight home after the grocery store. Jody had asked him to get some things for dinner since she would be a little late getting off of work tonight. Frank’s shift at the hospital didn’t start until late so he had the time to go do some errands. As he was leaving the grocery, he thought he would do something nice for his gal, maybe pick her up some flowers. She loved daffodils. The florist’s was a couple of blocks in the other direction, but she wouldn’t mind if he was a few minutes late. If he hurried he might even beat her back to the house.

  Halfway to the florist he saw a man and woman standing over someone in the alley as he crossed. The person on the ground looked injured and Frank started down the alley to see if he could help. As he drew closer he realized that they were the same people who had paid him a late night visit at the hospital several nights ago. He turned and ran.

  He ran towards his car parked at the grocery store, clutching his groceries in one hand while desperately trying to get his keys out of his jacket pocket with the other.

  The man caught up to him, just as he found his keys, and spun him around.

  Frank dropped his groceries and crouched, ready to fight for his life, if need be. To his surprise, the other man held both his hands up. “Whoa, there… Take it easy. We don’t want to hurt you. We just need your help.”

  “What do you want?” Frank asked.

  “Our friend was shot,” the man said.

  “Well, I’m not a doctor,” Frank informed him.

  The man was confused. “But you were at the medical facility.”

  “Yeah. I work there, but I’m only a technician. I just run the MRI machine. I don’t practice medicine.”

  The man furrowed his brow as he thought the situation over. “Well, you must know doctors then... call one of them.”

  “I can’t just call them up! And, besides, even if I could, I’m sure they’re already busy at the hospital.”

  The man pulled out a gun. At least, at first glance, it looked like an ordinary gun. It was the same gun the man had held on him at the hospital. The one with the funny end. It resembled a pistol, like the Glock 9mm he’d seen a picture of in one of the waiting room magazines, but the barrel was longer, and there was no hole at the end of it, there was more of a slit, like the pupil of a cat’s eye. He could hear a faint humming from the weapon.

  “What is that? A toy gun? You expect my help by pointing a child’s toy at me?” Frank asked.

  The man pointed the toy gun at the ground in front of Frank and pulled the trigger.

  A blast of light shot out of the muzzle, and the pavement six inches in front of Frank exploded. Chunks of concrete flew in all directions. “Jesus!” Frank shouted. “What the hell was that?”

  “Get in the car,” the man said.

  Frank had dropped his keys when the gun went off, and he bent over to pick them up. “Alright, man. Just take it easy.”

  He unlocked the car as the man stood behind him, watching. Frank sat down in the driver’s seat and reached over to unlock the passenger side door. “Sorry, no power locks on this baby…” For the life of him, Frank couldn’t figure out why he was apologizing for having a crappy car to a man who was holding him at gunpoint. Or whatever that thing was that he was holding.

  The man walked around to the door and got in. “Pull around to the alley and pick up my friends.”

  As Frank started the car, all he could think about was what his wife was going to say about him being late with di
nner. He pulled the car around to the alley where the woman helped their injured friend into the station wagon. He took a deep breath, exhaled with a sigh, and unbuckled his seat belt, twisting to face the back seat. “Let me see him.”

  The woman shot a look at her companion in the front.

  “It’s okay, Celia. Let him see how bad it is,” the man said.

  Frank told them his name. “And who are you guys?”

  The man in the front seat answered. “I’m Jack, this is Celia,” he indicated the woman in the back. “And our injured friend is Asher.”

  “Well, Jack, do me a favor and help Celia turn him over.”

  They turned him over to where the wound on his side was now where Frank could have a look at it. That the young man didn’t stir through all of this movement did not sit well with Frank. Either Asher was heavily medicated, or his injuries were serious.

  Frank pulled back the man’s tattered shirt and gasped at what he saw. There was a hole in the young man’s torso almost three inches wide. The outer edges were charred black. Whatever had caused this was red hot at the time. Frank couldn’t tell how deep the wound went, but it was full of blood and puss. “What the hell happened to him?”

  “He was shot while we were escaping,” Celia said.

  “Shot with what? And escaping from whom?” Frank asked. “Never mind, I don’t wanna know. But I’ve never seen anything that could do this to a person.”

  “That’s because there isn’t anything in your verse that can do that. At least, not yet, anyway,” Jack said.

  Celia stepped in, intending to explain it better than Jack. “He was shot with an energy weapon,” she said. “It’s a weapon that fires beams of energy.” Maybe Jack wasn’t doing such a bad job of explaining after all.

  “Like a laser gun?” Frank asked.

  Jack snorted. “Kinda like that, doc, only more intense.”

  Celia broke in. “Can you help him?”

  “Well, like I said before, I’m not really a doctor—”

  “Yeah, yeah, doc, but you know someone who can help, right?” Jack said.