"Why did they send you away so quickly after indoctrinating you?" Daniel asked.
"Because I mentioned that Grant was on a mission to find the Secretum. The Appointed knew of Grant and his status as the Bringer, but they knew that as long as he stayed away from the Hollow, there was no reason to engage him. The underground city was the key. However the Secretum pulled it off-killing Grant while allowing Oblivion to inhabit his body and take control of his powers-apparently it couldn't happen anywhere else in the world. So I was to keep Grant from entering that city at any cost. The Appointed thought this would be easy for me since I'd already earned his trust."
There was silence around the room as everyone digested this.
"Where are they now? The Appointed?" Lisa asked.
"I'm not sure," Ethan replied. "I was told that they never use conventional methods of communication, so there was little point in my trying to contact them after my assignment was done. Or hey, maybe they thought my assignment would never be done, or that I would never return from it. In any case, I did try to contact them after time stopped and Oblivion unleashed Hell, but it got me nowhere. I couldn't reach them, and now with all the satellites falling out of the sky, I doubt I ever will."
Something Ethan had said triggered a memory Alex had forgotten. Lost in thought, she mumbled the word, "DarkWorld."
Everyone turned.
"What?" Daniel asked.
Tired, she took a few breaths before answering. "Devlin and some of the Secretum people said it a lot: `DarkWorld.' I think they were using it to describe what Oblivion was doing to the earth."
"This is the DarkWorld," Payton explained. Apparently Alex was not the only one to have heard this term in use. "We're living on it."
No one had a reply to this. It was an evil, wicked thought. It was terrifying.
"There's something else you should know," Daniel began. "Morgan left behind ... well, I think it's some kind of recording. We found it in Julie's things. I've been waiting to take a look at it until everyone could see."
Alex's eyes drifted once again to Payton, who had stiffened noticeably at the mention of Morgan's name.
"We should let Alex get some rest and continue this later," Lisa said, standing to her feet. The others seemed to agree and began rising as well. "It's-"
Lisa let out a chuckle and Sergeant Tucker noticed. "What?" he said softly.
"I almost said `it's getting dark out,"' Lisa replied. "I forgot for half a second that it's always dark now."
Payton was already at the top of the stairs, preparing to go down, but he turned halfway back. "I hadn't noticed the difference."
"What do you mean?" asked Lisa, and everyone froze in place, waiting for his response.
"Death consumes everything. It's a universal constant, and it is all-powerful. The world has always been dark. And spiteful. And full of misery," he replied as he began descending the stairs. "It's just a bit more obvious now."
Alex wasn't sure how long she'd slept when she awoke to the sound of arguing downstairs. She felt stronger today, so despite the old man's wordless protestations, she insisted on going downstairs for the first time since she'd arrived here at Payton's sterile, function-before-form home.
She took the stairs slowly with the old man's help, her feet aching with each step and her stomach still anguished. But her frequent pauses let her listen and watch the argument unfold, just to the right and bottom of the staircase. No one seemed to notice her. Most of them were sitting around what looked like a small breakfast nook; Payton stood off to one side, arms crossed, body leaning against one of the six metal I-beams that were holding up the interior of the three-storyhigh building.
"But he's unstoppable! Facing him is suicide."
"How do we know that for sure?"
"Agreed," Daniel was saying. "Let's not forget that we have a weapon now-a real way of fighting back. We can release Ringwearers from his control. And I think it's safe to assume that once we've touched their bloodstream with the Dominion Stone, Ringwearers disappear from his internal radar-from the Forging-too. Oblivion can't see Payton and Alex anymore, or their location, or else we would have been found by now. So why shouldn't we free more of them?"
"Because what good would that do us?" Lisa replied. Alex was surprised to see these two falling on opposing sides of an argument. She'd noticed the glances and furtive hand-holding between them at the last group meeting. "Freeing Payton and Alex nearly cost us our lives. And even if we somehow freed every last one of the Ringwearers, do any of them realistically have a chance at stopping Oblivion?"
"I will stop him."
The conversation halted. Everyone turned to look at Payton.
"How?" Alex called out, descending to the bottom stair.
There was a bit of commotion as some of the others protested her appearance out of bed, but she refused to return. She wanted to see Morgan's message. So the others slid around the curving seats at the table and gave her a place to sit. Her one-handed caretaker sat next to her, watching over her IV line. She'd become accustomed to his presence and even found it oddly comforting.
"I said," Alex repeated, once everyone was situated, "how do you plan on stopping Oblivion? And if your answer involves anything other than finding a way to draw Grant out from inside Oblivion ... then you can just bury that plan right here and now."
She'd spoken with such icy resolve that no one dared question her, at least not at first. She and Payton stared each other down with such intensity that a few of the others held their breaths as they watched.
"B-b-but . . ." Lisa stuttered nervously, not taking her eyes off of the standoff between Alex and Payton, "but I thought ... that guy Devlin said Grant was dead. Didn't he?"
"I don't care what he said," Alex replied, looking at Lisa with hardened eyes. "I don't care what anyone says. Oblivion may not be Grant, but that doesn't mean Grant's not still in there. And if he's in there, he's fighting to get out, to regain control, to stop Oblivion from massacring any more people. So we're going to help him. All other options are off the table, as of this moment. Are we clear on this?"
She slowly looked at each of them in turn, ready to quell any arguments that might arise. She ended with eyes locked on Payton, the only other person in the room who knew how she was feeling, having just survived their shared ordeal at Oblivion's hands. Yet she knew that his idea of a solution to stop Oblivion would not be what she had in mind.
"Very well, love," he said softly. "You try it your way. But if no such way of reaching Grant can be found, then I will test my fate against his."
An uncomfortable silence followed. Daniel cleared his throat.
"For sake of argument," he said in his best professorial tone, "let's say Payton did try to take Oblivion on, mano-amano. From what the two of you have told us, his skin has turned to something hard, like cement or granite. How would you even-"
In a flash, Payton whipped out his sword and slashed a perfectly horizontal swipe at the load-bearing post he had been leaning against.
Everyone jumped at the sudden movement, and then gasps were heard as each of them realized there was now a perfectly straight line running through the entire beam, separating it into two pieces, one resting on top of the other.
Payton had sliced through it like it was a wet noodle.
"How did he do that?" Lisa whispered to Daniel under her breath. And then louder, at Payton, "How did you do that?"
He held the weapon out and examined it with great care and admiration. "This sword was forged centuries ago by those who knew exactly what the Bringer would become, and what it would take to kill him."
"The Appointed," Ethan said, nodding. "I suspected they might be responsible for such a weapon. I wonder how the Secretum got their hands on it, if they don't even know the Appointed exist?"
"The sword has had a prominent, if little-known, role in mankind's story. It was passed down for generations, through the hands of many key historical figures-"
"If I might interj
ect," Sergeant Tucker spoke up, his hand halfheartedly raised a few inches off the table. "Could we get back to the part where we free more of your super-friends from Oblivion? No offense to Mr. Sword Guy here, but I'm thinking we need all the help we can get."
"Second," Lisa added, raising her hand.
"Seems to me, we're now faced with two problems," sighed Ethan. "How to find the other Ringwearers, and how to decide which ones to free. We can't realistically get to them all. For one thing, Oblivion would notice, just as he's no doubt noticed you two gone from his radar or whatever," he said, nodding at Alex and Payton.
"Finding them won't be a problem," Payton said, sheathing his sword and leaning back against the pillar again. "They will be wherever Oblivion is. They will be drawn to him by his will. All of them."
"That complicates things," Daniel said with a frown. "But Ethan's right-we can't hope to go after them all. So who do we pick? We can all think of Loci we would love to have on our side because they would be useful, or because they're our friends and we don't want them to suffer under Oblivion's thumb anymore. But we have to be objective about this; we're talking about the good of mankind here. The more Ringwearers we try to free, not to mention the longer we risk getting close to Oblivion, the more we risk losing everything. So who do we absolutely need?"
"Hector," Payton said quietly, not looking at anyone else.
"I'm not sure I see how-"
"For Alex," Payton interrupted.
Alex was touched at Payton's concern, despite their earlier tension. But then it wasn't the first time he'd surprised the rest of them.
Daniel swallowed and nodded, apparently unable to argue. Hector could very likely heal Alex completely, with a single touch. Though Alex wondered if the scars she bore on her stomach and arm would ever truly heal.
"All right then. Hector. Who else?" Daniel asked.
"Shouldn't we go for the most powerful?" Ethan asked. "They would be most useful in a fight."
"I wouldn't count out tacticians like Fletcher yes, Fletcher," Lisa said, adding the last part when she saw skeptical looks around the room. "Like him or not, he's brilliant, and could probably see solutions the rest of us might never pick up on."
"I'd like to get Nora. She could help us cover our tracks," Ethan offered. "And that stuffy British woman, Mrs. Edeson. She controls willpower, right?"
Alex nodded.
"What about that electricity guy I saw you all with in Jerusalem ... William?" Ethan asked.
"Wilhelm," Alex corrected.
"I don't know . . ." Lisa admitted, timidly. "I still feel like we're unprepared for this. Should we maybe take some time and rethink-"
"No one deserves being enslaved to Oblivion's will," Payton said with quiet resolve. "The notion of doing nothing is more offensive to me than any physical violation could ever be."
Payton's tone of voice had left little room for argument. Alex understood. He spoke from bitter personal experience, and if this was what he wanted to do ...
"Alex?" Daniel asked. "What do you think? Is planning a mission like this foolhardy? What do you want to do?"
"Want?" Alex nearly laughed humorlessly. The word was alien and almost nonsensical to her. "You know, I'm not sure anyone has ever asked me that question before. Oblivion never asked what I wanted. Life has never been too concerned with my wants either."
When Daniel made a funny face in reaction to this dismal proclamation, Alex became incensed.
"Did you know," she said, painfully sitting up a little straighter, "that before I was Alex, I was a girl named Becky, born with a degenerative spinal condition that never allowed me to walk on my own? And that I am the only person alive to willingly undergo the Shift, knowing full well what would happen to me? Did you know that in fourteen years, I have not once laid eyes on my real family? And that I think about them every day and wonder what's become of them?"
The old man placed a calming hand on her shoulder, but she ignored the gesture.
"What do I want? I want to find my little brother Mark and sit him on my lap, like I used to, and listen to him giggle. I want to ask Morgan about the meaning of life, and listen to her soothing voice as she assembles all of the pieces for me. I want to walk hand-in-hand with Grant through an idyllic fairy-tale meadow, and then have a picnic under a cloudless sky...
"No one has ever cared about what I want, so why start now? Why are we sitting around talking about stupid things like what people want? For crying out loud, somebody get that disc of Morgan's and let's see what's on it already!"
Little was said in the wake of Alex's outburst. Finally, feeling awkward and self-conscious, Daniel excused himself from the table to retrieve the disc in question. Passing by Payton, he mumbled quietly, "You got a laptop or something?"
He then went to find his bag and fished the disc out of it. Returning to the table, Payton had already set up a small computer for him.
Daniel reseated himself and opened the drive, slipped in the disc, and closed the drive. The computer whirred to life, the only sound to be heard, and soon a video application launched. Frozen in the very first frame of the video was Morgan's face, very much alive and offering the slightest creases at the edges of her lips in a tiny smile.
Daniel's heart sank at the sight. He hadn't realized until now just how much her absence had been suffered. He felt very much like they were all children whose mother had passed away, and now they were trying to find their way on their own, without her infinite wisdom and care to guide them.
He glanced around the table and saw that similar emotions were written on Lisa's and Alex's faces. Payton's expression was impossible to read, while Ethan, Tucker, and the old man-none of whom had ever met Morgan-stretched around to see the video without realizing the true significance of what they were taking part in.
Daniel placed his hand over the keyboard and paused there, reverentially, before finally clicking the cursor's button to select Play.
Morgan's image snapped to life. Daniel's free hand was soon covered by Lisa's, under the table. She squeezed tight.
"To whoever is watching this video," Morgan said in her gentle British clip, "and I hope that it is Julie, or perhaps Alex-the fact that you are watching this means that two things have probably occurred. First of all, I am most likely dead. If that is the case, I would ask that you do not grieve for me, please. I am sure it happened as it did for a reason, as I believe everything does. Though I do hope I went in the night while sleeping. Or better yet, reading.
"The second thing that has probably occurred is that something drastic and terrible has happened to my friend Grant Borrows. I would be very surprised if he is with you, listening to me now. You see, I have suspected for quite some time now that the Secretum's designs for Grant involved altering him in some fundamental way-remaking him once again, this time to serve their purposes.
"I pray that I am incorrect about this, and only my death has prompted the viewing of this video. In that case, then my greatest fears have been unfounded, and perhaps the events I fear the most will never play out. Grant, if you are there, watching this now, then I owe you an apology for keeping what I know to myself.
"Please allow me a moment to explain myself, and in time you may come to understand why I did not believe that anyone else was ready to know what I know. You see, it is my belief that whatever has happened to Grant-it was unavoidable. I believe that the Secretum's designs for Grant would eventually lead him down a very dark road-one that he could not turn away from, even with the very great power that he commands."
She cleared her throat and sat up straighter in her seat. Around the table as they were watching these last words from their friend, no one dared utter a sound. Lisa leaned into Daniel a little farther, her expression taut. He squeezed her hand back.
"If Grant is indeed dead," Morgan said, "then I suspect he has been replaced by someone or something of terrible, ferocious power. And I fully expect that this has been the work of the Secretum, playing itself out. Again, p
lease allow me to emphasize that no matter how much willpower Grant possesses-and we all know he possesses a great deal of willpower-there was no way for him to avoid this fate. Invisible forces have been at work, bending him toward this purpose, since long before any of us were born.
"The day I first met Grant, I visited an old woman living in my facility named Marta. Marta had the peculiar ability to see eventualities, making her the closest thing to a prophet the world has seen in centuries. That day, she told me that Grant was, to use her words, `part of something greater than all of us. Vast and powerful, it reaches back through the fabric of history to the very beginning of time. Those like him have been with us since it all began, in one form or another.'
"Some time later came the day of the firestorm over Los Angeles. It was that fateful day, when Grant squared off against his grandfather, that I believe we first got a glimpse of the true power of the Bringer. We all watched what happened as Grant lost himself to his grief over Hannah's death: The skies boiled and fire threatened to rain down upon us. While all of this was happening, Grant's grandfather kept goading him, pushing him to `unleash the whirlwind,' as it were. It was on that day that I realized the Secretum wanted more than just Grant-much more. I came to believe, over time, that what we saw that day was merely the first stage of something much larger. If Grant is dead and he's been replaced, as I suspect, then you have probably seen that firestorm blossom into something much worse, something big and terrible enough to consume the whole world.
"I took my suspicions about the events of that day with me as I began a journey of learning all I could about the Secretum of Six, most especially its prophecies and plans. Since that time, I have become consumed and obsessed with discovering the secrets of the Secretum in the hopes of seeing if there is any way of undoing what would one day be done to Grant. I confess I cannot provide an answer to this question with any degree of certainty. But I have a theory that may be of help to you now.
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