Was it? No, he felt no guilt over his desire to save his family. It was the deaths, those of Sarah and Anna, and those of billions of others, that burdened him. He felt the torment from the weight of those lost souls every day he drew breath.
He realized that it was something deeper than that.
“I always thought I was invincible, and because of that, I thought nothing could happen to them. I realized there were gaps in the watch schedule, but I didn’t say anything. I knew I could fix any problem that came up. I’ve been told that since I was born, Angel. That because of my Energy, I couldn’t be hurt, couldn’t suffer any loss. That arrogance ruled my life, even though I didn’t know it. When I finally met a true challenge, I didn’t know what to do. That lack of humility drove me to act irrationally. I could just keep teleporting and catch Abaddon, because nobody could teleport farther and faster than me. I never stopped to realize that if that was true, he wasn’t moving. I would have stopped, I would have considered how far he might be able to travel in the time since he’d gotten them, would have realized he told me where he was all along.” Angel stared at him. “It’s true. He told me the aircraft was bound for Aliomenti Headquarters. He said he removed the Hunters. He never said he’d changed course.” He shook his head. “One small change, and billions of people would still be alive. I don’t know if I would have been able to find Sarah and Anna in time. But no one else would suffer as a result.” He looked at her. “That’s why I need to go away, Angel. I don’t have the emotional stability needed to control this so-called gift.”
“Fil, listen to me. You’re absolutely right about your sense of invincibility. You’re right that it requires control and discipline to wield that power. Let me ask you something, Fil. If someone has the ability to destroy cities, and it happens only once in two hundred years of living… is that evidence of a lack of control? In all the time you’ve been alive, you’ve never so much as knocked over a bully. You could level a house by breathing loudly, Fil. The reality is that you were blessed with this ability specifically because you are uniquely disciplined.”
Could that be true? “Dad would have done better.”
“Dad did better in his time of trial because he didn’t have the power to do anything about it. You sensed the raw emotion when he healed up a bit. He had every intention to track down each Hunter and the Assassin. He had no interest in sparing any of them. In other words, had our father been in possession of your ability, the world would be short one Assassin and three Hunters. And he wouldn’t have concerned himself with the fact that his anger—his explosive anger—would have taken out the city of Pleasanton.” She shook her head. “It’s not a lack of discipline on your part, Fil. It’s your incredible restraint that sets you apart. And I’m proud—incredibly and constantly proud—that I get to call you my brother.” She stood and kissed the top of his head, and then walked out.
Fil didn’t know whose words that day—his to his father, or Angel’s to him—had a more profound effect. But when he slept that night, he didn’t dream of death. He dreamed of Anna’s birth, and felt the profound joy of her arrival once more.
Adam arrived again that morning to report that Will wasn’t in his room. Fil and Angel traced his last steps. Angel reported that Will’s lingering Energy carried feelings of guilt, of a belief that his presence put those he cared for in danger. Will believed that if he left, the risk to those he cared for would vanish. Fil could feel her eyes boring into him.
He closed his own eyes and traced the Energy trails, found the burst of Will’s teleportation hop. He could almost see the image Will had in mind when he made that jump. He’d gone back to the old campsite, the spot where the Hunters had found him. The Energy signals of the Hunters lingered as well. He could see that new Energy emanation from the Hunters and Will had terminated at the same point in time.
His father had given himself up to protect them.
Fil didn’t feel any safer. And he realized that if he was gone, those he cared about wouldn’t be any safer from those who would do them harm. Perhaps he couldn’t be everywhere at once and protect everyone. But he’d do everything he could.
Adam’s look brought him back to the present, to the timeline and plan set out decades earlier. Will’s temporary visit to Aliomenti Headquarters meant the end of this script was in sight.
They waited.
Angel bolted upright. “He’s back at the same location.”
The trio exchanged a glance. “Let’s go,” Adam said.
Fil arrived in the clearing and saw the tree. It had been charred during the Aliomenti attack. He could feel the tree working to repair the charred bark, using sunlight that its accelerated growth made accessible. Without Will’s work, the tree might not have suffered a direct hit. But that same work meant the tree now had the means to recover.
He’d ponder the deeper meaning later.
Will seemed different. The experience at Headquarters had changed him. He’d gotten answers to questions he didn’t know he ought to ask.
He formed a four person aircraft and the quartet rode back to the camp in silence, protected from detection and tracking by the Energy shielding qualities of the nanos. When they arrived in camp, Will demanded answers. He knew the year. He didn’t know why he’d been put in some type of stasis for two centuries.
“You weren’t asleep, Will,” Adam said. “The machine we used to rescue you from the Hunters’ attack that night was a time machine.”
He watched his father’s reaction. Disbelief. Then anger. Why would these people tell him lies? Weren’t they supposed to be the good guys? Why would they rescue him and then put him in some kind of suspended animation? Will thought it made sense. If he’d suffered some type of injury and lost his abilities, they might put him in a deep sleep until they knew how to cure those injuries.
But a time machine?
A man who’d learned how to perform telepathy and telekinesis, who’d teleported nearly a half dozen times in the past twenty-four hours, had finally heard a tale he couldn’t believe. He wouldn’t believe this. Time travel wasn’t possible.
Angel tried to tell Will that he knew—knew—that what Adam said was true, because his empathy and telepathic skills made lying to him impossible.
And Will broke down. He no longer knew who he was. He knew only what he wanted more than anything else. He wanted his wife and son back, alive and well, and he wanted to go out to the dinner they’d planned for his birthday the night everything changed.
It was the confession they needed. Will would get in the time machine now.
When Adam made the offer, Will stormed away to his room.
They left him alone. He needed time to process everything.
They found him the next day, sitting just outside the safety of the scutarium mist, his back against one of ancient trees he so loved.
They started toward Will to continue the conversation. But something nagged at him. Something he needed to do. What was it?
He held up his hand. “Wait.”
He moved back to the Mechanic’s lab and found Smokey. “Come with me, girl. There’s somebody who’d like to see you.”
Smokey cocked her head. When he smacked his thigh and called her, she bounded to her feet and trotted after him, tail held high.
The reunion between Will and Smokey was deeply touching. His father finally had the connection to the past he needed. But they needed him to work toward a deeper connection.
They asked him to suspend his disbelief in time travel. All evidence they had pointed toward all Starks disappearing. There were no bodies found in the ruins of the house. The Aliomenti had never bragged to its membership that they’d enforced the proper punishments upon the Oath breaker Will Stark and his family. Combined with the Assassin’s confession, they knew that Hope and Josh had survived. The question was: how?
With the time machine an option, they’d realized the truth. Will, now possessed of Energy abilities, could enter the scene at just the right moment, t
eleport his family to the safety of the time machine, and bring them forward to this time. They’d be together.
But there were risks. The rules of time travel mandated that nothing in history change. Will, Hope, and Joshua Stark were dead in the eyes of the world. Hope and Josh could alter their appearances and live out their lives in the past. But Will, with his new Energy skills, would be a target of the Hunters. If they found Will, they’d find Hope and Josh. His greatest fear—that his presence would endanger his loved ones—meant that Will must return to 2219. Or he must die in 2030, by his own hand if necessary.
Will didn’t hesitate. He accepted those rules.
The Mechanic’s nano-based time machine was ready for use. They loaded the supplies for the journey under the back seat. Era-specific clothing. A small pouch with coins appropriate to the time. The scroll computer loaded with dated messages that would appear only when necessary. The first message he’d see was a letter from the three primary actors in this drama, giving him the truth of his time travel trip and their apologies for the need to mislead.
Fil thought it was a terrible way for his father to learn the truth of his existence and journey. But he didn’t know of another way.
The following day, Will climbed into the cabin of the time machine. The Mechanic, who’d worked ninety straight hours to complete the construction, pleaded exhaustion. Adam and Angel stepped up to provide Will with a pep talk that sounded like a permanent farewell.
And then it was his turn.
He didn’t know what to say.
“You’re going to get your wish, Fil,” his father said. “I’m going away. And there’s a good chance the trip will kill me.”
Fil’s temper flashed. “I’ve never wanted you dead,” he snapped.
But his father asked a fair question. Why had Fil always made Will feel unwelcome? Why had Fil, and only Fil, highlighted only Will’s faults, and never tried to help him improve?
The confession came naturally. The youthful Fil’s belief that Will Stark was a selfish man, a man who, with all the advantages knowledge of the future brought, hadn’t spent any time with his son. It was the behavior one would expect from a man who thought his son unworthy of effort and attention. It meant he considered his son an embarrassment.
Will’s jaw dropped in stunned silence. “I’m about to risk my life in an effort to save my son’s life,” he whispered. “I’m not going to stay here and take these insults.”
And he slapped the start button.
Will wouldn’t try to teleport out of the time machine. And the Mechanic had constructed the cabin to prevent teleportation. And it meant he could finally reveal himself.
He pulled off the sunglasses and looked his father straight in the eye. He expected a lack of recognition, or a look of revulsion and anger.
Instead, he saw instant recognition, and a fiery pride that his son had survived. He could see Will’s mouth move, and even with his limited lip reading abilities he knew what the man had said.
Josh.
He felt the wave of understanding as Will took it all in. He’d met his grown son, a man who’d had a job to do and did so without complaint. But Will also realized someone else in that camp had a hidden identity. Fil watched the jade green eyes snap to Angel. He looked at his sister, saw her emotion at Will’s recognition of her as his daughter. Angel could only wave and whisper. “Love you, Daddy.”
And then the time machine vanished.
It wasn’t a true farewell. But each of them had gotten what they needed. Will learned his son survived and had grown to adulthood. He learned he had a daughter he’d never known about, and that she, too, had grown to adulthood.
Angel had gotten to call Will “Dad.” No, she’d called him Daddy, her own way of making up for a childhood together forever lost.
And Fil learned that his father had never lost faith in him. He’d never stopped believing in him. He’d seen his son’s eyes in the grown man before him, and he didn’t doubt what he saw. He didn’t believe his son incapable of growing to adulthood, of accepting complex responsibilities and carrying out those responsibilities. His father had never stopped believing in him.
Fil sank to the ground and sobbed. He’d finally gotten the validation he’d so desperately needed.
XXIV
Freedom
2219 A.D.
The morning dawned with a light cloud cover and a gentle breeze. The air carried with it hint of a possible storm later in the day. Rain had been sparse over the past few weeks, ever since they’d make this site home, and the local vegetation would benefit from a drink of water. Fil didn’t much care about that, though. The trees and shrubs reminded him of his father’s presence in his life over the past two months, of the synergistic use of vegetation to grow his Energy skills.
He’d driven his father away. The years would provide Will plenty of time to think about and understand what had happened and why. They’d given him vague hints in their questions and messages and the letter he’d read soon after arriving in a place that was most assuredly not Pleasanton, Ohio. Will would realize that he’d been manipulated into stepping into the time machine of his own free will to save his family. Would he forgive the manipulation?
At some point, Will would realize that they’d taken away memories made in 2219. He’d realize that they’d blocked memories of his life up until the Hunters and Assassin had arrived. He’d know they’d prevented him from recognizing Eva and Charlie and Gena and all the others. He’d not recognized Eva when he met her back in the eleventh century, though she’d been his neighbor in the twenty-first and twenty-third. He’d not recognized the name of his twenty-first century bodyguard in the name of a man who’d act as Arthur Lowell’s muscle back in the eleventh century. He’d not realize that they’d blocked memories and observations that would enable him to work out details of his existence too far in advance. They’d confessed to some of their machinations, but not all of them.
They’d lied to him, in so many ways.
He’d slept outside overnight, letting the dew cover him and soak through his clothing. Sleep had never truly come. He’d reclined outside, wondering if his actions had forever damaged his chance to reconcile with his father. He couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d destroyed the Stark family before it ever had a chance to become a functional unit.
It wouldn’t be complete, not without Sarah and Anna. It could be as complete as possible in this era, though, with Angel and Charlie, his parents, and him. Adam had talked to Will about being part of the family as well, whatever that was supposed to mean. But that all presupposed there was a family there to join. He wouldn’t blame Will for walking away and never coming back.
He rose and walked back to his home. The dwelling he’d shared with Angel the past two months was built with his nanos. Once Will left, Angel had moved back in with Charlie. He didn’t need as much space with his sister gone. He adjusted the home. It was small and simple, devoid of any life or coloring. He had little interest in spending time there.
After wandering over to the shower area for a quick bath, he headed outside the mist to be alone and to brood.
Adam found him first. It didn’t take the older man much effort to read Fil’s emotions. “You did your job, Fil. Now, it’s up to Will to do his.”
Fil didn’t move. “I wish I knew how it all turned out for him. This time. I wish I could talk to him now, after he’s lived through it all, understands everything, and just understand… I need to know if he ever did understand.”
“Your father is a patient man, Fil,” Adam replied. “And a calm and rational one. He did many things over the course of his life he didn’t want to do, hid the truth from those he wanted to enlighten, all for a greater good. There’s little chance he doesn’t know why you did what you did. He may not like our chosen tactics, but he’ll understand.”
“I hope he made it,” Fil said, not bothering to remove his chin from atop his knees. “I hope he’s still around
right now. I wish we knew that our efforts, and his, were successful.”
Adam shrugged. “You’re still here, aren’t you? And Angel is as well. That was his motivation in going back in time all along, to ensure the two of you survived the Assassin’s attack. By his definition, his trip was a success.”
Fil snorted, then closed his eyes behind the sunglasses. “I’m sure he’d say that. It’s not enough for me, though. I need to know that he’s okay. In every way possible. I need to know that I didn’t fail.”
Fil spotted a faint blur of orange moving through the trees, and moments later, the Mechanic moved into the clearing. “How is everyone today?”
Adam inclined his head at Fil. “Introspective. Fil’s trying to figure out if, after learning the truth, Will ever understood why we did what we did. And if he ever forgave all of us.”
The Mechanic, long a source of sage advice among the members of the community, tilted his head and thought for a moment. “Forgiveness? I doubt that took much time. Understanding, though? That likely took a long time. I suspect that your father knew you did what you believed to be best, Fil, just as he did in staying away after your birth. It’s not always easy to do the right thing.” He grimaced. “I do suspect he would have preferred learning the truth of your identity a few moments sooner and had the chance for a proper farewell with his son and daughter. Instead, he’ll need to wait twelve centuries for that chance.”
Fil could only nod.
“I still wonder what really happened to him,” Adam mused. He sat down on the grass near Fil, stretching his legs out. “Officially, we have no record of him existing after his birth.” He chortled. “That sentence would get me committed to most mental institutions, wouldn’t it?”
The Mechanic looked interested. “I’m not sure I follow that statement.”
Adam nodded. “Will started his journey in the past in the year 1018. He was born in 1995. But Will disappeared from our sights after an attack by the Hunters in 1994. He never truly checked in with us or gave us any formal declaration that he survived that 1994 encounter. We know he did, because he summoned the Hunters to Pleasanton in 2030. But… where was he in between? And where has he been since?”
Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm Page 31
