Adam shook his head. The Aliomenti had advanced technology, relative to the general human population. But they had nothing that could compete with what Will and the Alliance had built here. He’d escaped death at the hands of the Aliomenti, and given birth to a city.
Adam reached the meeting room and stepped inside.
The Shadow sat at a table with Will, and both looked up as Adam entered. Adam gave a polite nod to both. Adam knew her true identity and name, but followed local custom and referred to her only as Shadow among the Alliance. He’d known since only weeks after Elizabeth Lowell’s alleged death that she’d survived; only her new name and location had been hidden. Adam knew those details now, and Will seemed unconcerned about betrayal of that secret. Adam had sworn that the Shadow’s identity was a secret he’d take to his grave. Will believed him. Adam and Hope bonded well; they shared stories of Eva, the few happy memories Hope had from her years in the North Village. Their efforts now, however, focused on preparing for the future.
“The Assassin—William—remains a variable we cannot control,” Hope said by way of introduction. She glanced at Will. “You’re certain I can’t simply teleport him out into the middle of the ocean?”
“As tempting as that would be, William has a role to play in the future,” Will replied.
Adam glanced at the stack of notes he’d made during their discussions. “It says here that he helps you escape Aliomenti Headquarters during your time in the distant future, during the time you’re away from me and the children.” He looked up. “No chance you can get free without his help?”
Will shook his head. “I don’t think so.” He paused, stretching his mind back to an event that had occurred nine centuries before, in his memory, but one that would happen three centuries into the future in the lives of those around him. “They meant to execute me, even though I’d willingly given myself up to prevent them from using me to trace the others. Something made me change my mind, though; I think I found out about the fact that I wasn’t in the when I thought I was, and I felt betrayed, lied to. I wanted to face all of you again, understand why. In any event, if William wasn’t there… Arthur had mentioned that he’d replaced William with another Assassin, and having William there just seemed more appropriate since he was the one who had, in Arthur’s mind, executed my wife. Someone in the Alliance had altered William, though; he was there to help me the whole time, without seeming to help me.”
Adam shook his head. “That makes no sense. If William’s still around, why would they get another Assassin? They wanted to kill that many humans? And how would one of our people influence William in any event?”
“When you and the children come back to get me, you somehow wind up with William as well. Maybe Hope knocks him out without killing him, or otherwise injures him.” Hope nodded, looking pleased. “When you return to 2219 from 2030, you have me and William both in tow. So…”
“So, he was our prisoner,” Adam said, a grim smile on his face. Then he frowned. “So… he escaped?”
Will shook his head. “He knew he’d been… altered somehow. I suspect that when that alteration happened, we turned him loose, probably with a false story about being put to sleep for two centuries.” He thought for a moment. “In fact, I think Arthur or one of the Hunters said exactly, that, how I’d been put into a deep sleep, just like the Assassin, so that must mean all of them mustn’t think much of me. So, yes, we likely turned him loose so that he was there when I arrived.”
Hope sighed. “This is frustrating. I’m struggling to keep track of all of this.”
Adam put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “You don’t have to, remember?” He pointed to his stack of notes. “We’re getting down the key events first. After we do that, we can start the planning effort to make sure it all happens.”
Will nodded. “Right. There are three eras of time to consider. The distant future time I’m taken to by Adam and the children, which is the year 2219. The near future when the Hunters attack me and the Assassin attempts to execute Hope and Josh, and sets our home on fire. And the time we have left to plan for those distant future eras.”
Hope’s face fell. “He can only attempt to kill Josh if our son is actually born.”
Adam’s face was full of sympathy. "There's a lot of time left. Be patient and be confident. The answers will come.”
“I’ve been patient for almost nine centuries,” Hope snapped, “while we’ve shown the ability to invent all of this but not crack the mysteries of the ambrosia.” Hope waved her hand to indicate the marvels of the Cavern. Her face started to show signs of emotional fatigue. “We've used ninety percent of our time and have no hint of a cure. If we don’t find it, this entire long life has been meaningless.”
“I disagree,” Adam replied. “There have been countless lives improved by your existence, your presence, and your actions. And countless more whose lives have been touched by those you’ve directly helped. No, your life has been anything but meaningless.” He fixed Hope with a piercing stare. “And the answers to those questions will come.”
Hope sniffed as Will replied to Adam. “We must continue forward with the assumption that the solutions to the ambrosia issue will be resolved in time for the children to be born.” He forced himself to keep his voice calm, but in truth he was panicking himself. It was strange to view a century as a mere blink of an eye, a race against time. Yet after living for so long, it seemed they had mere days to deal with everything. “We do ourselves no favors to consider any alternative while we’re planning. Fair enough?” He glanced at Hope. She nodded, with reluctance.
Will took a deep breath and continued. “As I said, we have three eras of time to consider. Our goal is to try to make sure that everything plays out exactly as remembered. In even that latest stitch of time, Arthur, the Hunters, and William are all alive. That means that at no point could they die, as much as they might deserve to do so, and thus we cannot kill them. I’ve refrained for nine centuries, and I don’t want to change things up now. We don’t know what the repercussions might be.”
“But what if the repercussions are positive?” Adam asked. “What if the elimination of the Hunters and the Leader actually eliminated the need to worry about this? We just find the cure, the kids are born, and we all live happily ever after?”
“I’ve asked myself that same question—many, many times—and the honest answer is that we have no way to know what the repercussions would be,” Will replied. “But I suspect that if we change history as I remember it, we run the risk that the children aren’t born, that I don’t get sent back in time to Hope, and that we don’t come across the ambrosia and the other ingredients necessary to produce all of this. Perhaps even Arthur has something good to do in the future. We just don’t know.” He took a deep breath. “As noted, I’ve avoided taking that chance for nine centuries now. I don’t know that we want to change course, but I’m open to suggestions.”
Adam frowned, thought for a moment, and shook his head. “As satisfying as it would be for me personally, I agree that we don’t have much choice. We can’t change anything until you’ve been safely sent back in time.” He smiled, and the look was chilling. “In 2219, after we send young Will back to rescue Elizabeth from Arthur, we should rally the children and the rest of the Alliance and take them all down. What does your memory say about that plan?”
“Nothing,” Will replied. “There was no discussion about moving on the Elites and attacking while I was living there. To be honest, I don’t think I would have been involved in any discussions of that type. I wasn’t even told about the Cavern; I was led to believe that the Alliance might well have been down to the few dozen people living in that camp. I think that was a strategic decision, though, since you would know I was going to be taken to Aliomenti Headquarters and it would be advisable for me to think there were so few. Even if they knew there was more than that, I wouldn’t be able to help them confirm it.”
Hope and Adam both nodded agreement, and Adam
started adding to his pile of notes. “I’ll make sure I make note of that. It’s a new detail we’d not mentioned before, and it’s something I’ll need to be sure is handled in the future.”
Will nodded. “We do need to discuss a more current issue as well, namely, the ever-growing control exerted by the Aliomenti on world governments. It’s a deeply concerning issue.”
As Will had suspected, the Aliomenti had moved into North America after establishing their Headquarters on a small island located in an area referred to as the Bermuda Triangle. Will suspected that the ships and, eventually, planes that went missing in the region weren’t lost due to some strange natural phenomenon. Using the island as a base, the Aliomenti had sent their membership into North America in large numbers. Once established, they’d begun maneuvering themselves into the larger business enterprises, wresting control and income streams from the giant trusts and corporations that had exploded upon the American landscape. The largest growth had come after Aliomenti control began. The Alliance countered that effort, pushing through legislation that enabled political leaders to break up the largest and most powerful of those conglomerations, especially those with heavy levels of Aliomenti infiltration. Will, a successful businessman in every era in which he'd lived, had bristled at those laws, but recognized that those organizations weren’t naturally-occurring growths of human enterprises; they were enhanced by Aliomenti intent upon using those structures to exert their control over yet another population of humans.
“We do have quite a few of our people acting as aides and staffers for key Representatives and Senators,” Hope said. “However, they’re distracted now by the Great War. We’ll not get much done until that ends.”
Adam nodded. “It’s working; the Aliomenti know it’s happening but they’re unable to figure out who is doing the influencing. They know it’s the Alliance; they just can’t target the correct people. The Assassin wants to take out the entire Congress, but cooler heads have prevailed.”
Will winced. “Okay. I guess there’s not much else we can do here. Are we having the same effect in Europe?”
“Yes,” Adam agreed. “The Great War was something the Aliomenti… didn’t discourage, and of course they’re profiting off of all the destruction. But the Alliance is doing an excellent job fighting back. I hope this War ends soon, and the humans don’t get maneuvered into anything like it ever again. The weapons they’ve built…” He shook his head.
“There will always be war,” Will said, his voice somber. “And the weaponry will become even more powerful.”
There was brief bit of silence as Hope and Adam absorbed those words. Will glanced around. “Should we get back to more local concerns, then? A quick review of what my feeble memory has helped document?” He smiled.
“I'll give it a shot," Hope said, as she shook herself of the thought of ongoing decades or centuries of human warfare. “What we know is this: Young Will and I will meet in the year 2020, when I will be eighteen years old.” Both men stifled laughs, and Hope shot them both a withering glare that didn’t travel to her face. “We will marry, and after some difficulty Josh will arrive in the year 2024. I will become pregnant with Angel in late December 2029 or early January 2030. On Will’s birthday, he will leave our home as he usually does, and when he returns, he will find evidence that something has gone terribly wrong and suspect someone has broken into our neighborhood and is on his way to kill me and Josh. He will make it to our home in time to see an explosion that sets our house on fire. While he is searching for a way inside to see if Josh or I have survived, the Hunters emerge, beat him, and eventually learn he has a son. By the Aliomenti Oaths, the latter is a death sentence for Will. But Adam and the children arrive in the basement in the time machine. They can’t teleport him away because Porthos would detect their presence and flash to the basement, spying the time machine. Adam, you and the children will develop a tunnel and will pull Will through, without using Energy, into the time machine, which will return the four of you and the Assassin to the year 2219. Over the course of two months, the children will mask their identities as Will’s adult children, while the three of you teach Young Will the basics of Energy use. He’ll draw the attention of the Hunters with his growing Energy, eventually give himself up to protect all of you from attack, and from the Hunters and Arthur will learn when he is. He’ll be offered the chance to use the time machine to return to the time of the fire to save me and Josh, and will be given cryptic warnings that are actually guiding messages for this entire thousand year journey.”
Will applauded quietly. “That’s an excellent summary.”
“Since I’ve summarized it so well, there’s no chance of anything going wrong, correct?”
Adam laughed. “Well, we could always have a few members of the Alliance hide in the trees and shoot them if needed.”
“Actually, we can’t,” Will replied, though he did offer a faint smile. “Porthos at one point made it clear that there was nobody else around. Well, besides Arthur.”
“You mean nobody he could detect, right? He never noticed me or Josh or Angel… or Hope. For all we know, there were other people around, ready to act if something unexpected happened.”
Will sighed, but he looked thoughtful. “I suppose that’s true. I wasn’t around long enough to see what happened to the Hunters after I was removed from the scene.”
“I think it would be wise to ensure we have backup support in place from some of our team,” Adam said, excited at the prospect. “We can plant them inside the forest and hide them before the events unfold. They’ll be there, ready to step in if needed. That means they can’t stop you from being injured, or stop the Assassin from lighting the house on fire. If the Hunters work too quickly, though, and we don’t have you pulled to safety, then they can act to protect you from death.”
Will nodded his consent to the plan. He didn’t like putting others at risk, but the stakes were too high not to take the risk. “I admit it does seem strange to talk about my injuries as a good thing.”
“It will take a huge amount of self-control for me not to destroy the Assassin when he’s in my house threatening me and my son,” Hope said, her voice approaching a snarl. “There’s quite a bit that will happen in the course of those few hours that will be difficult.” Her face tightened as she glanced at the two men. “Is he truly as awful as the reports suggest?”
Adam nodded, his face grim. “I’m afraid so. More and more of the Aliomenti are tiring of the lifestyle, and even Arthur’s embedded controls haven’t slowed down the exodus.” He paused and smiled. “They may have a bit of help in overcoming those controls, of course.” His face turned thoughtful. “They aren't coming here, unfortunately. Most of the Aliomenti haven't heard that the infamous Will Stark, a founder of the Aliomenti and the inventor of many of the core inventions that propelled the group to power and wealth, has an alternative group. These are people who are simply going on assignments for the various Aliomenti business interests… and simply disappearing. It’s not that difficult to track them down, but the sheer numbers mean that Arthur and the Hunters have to prioritize. They’ve started using computer chips to help.”
Will glanced up, startled, and blinked rapidly. “Computer chips?”
Adam nodded. “Arthur has started a process whereby every Aliomenti must come before him to retake their Oaths, something they need to do every three or four years. The process includes a visit with Aramis. Every one of them is drained as a means to remind them of the importance of obedience, of following the Oaths. While they’re unconscious from the Energy drain, doctors implant a computer chip coded to the individual that tracks them without using Energy; it’s not been lost on Arthur and the Hunters that they’ve struggled to find Alliance members.” He winced. “The chip can also do some nasty things to them from afar.”
“So the Aliomenti have invented GPS,” Will muttered. He’d built the forerunner of the system centuries earlier to enable the navigation and autopilot systems for th
e Nautilus; it seemed the Aliomenti were now catching up.
“Right” Adam agreed, though he looked a bit perplexed by the term. “If someone defects, especially someone powerful, and Porthos can't find them, they can use those chips to find them. They’ve implanted powerful drugs within the chips that can be triggered into the bloodstream remotely. One of those drugs knocks the person out for about twelve hours. That’s for people they want to retrieve. If they think you’re too far gone, if they think you’ve gone over to the dark side of Will Stark…” He let the implication hang in the air.
Will nodded, his face grim. “That’s not good. It’s not a surprise, though. Arthur’s not going to sit back and wait for people to leave; he’s going to do something with more permanence than the mental reprogramming. We need to make sure that information gets out to everyone so we don’t put our location at risk of exposure. Recruitment cannot involve bringing anyone back here until we’re sure those chips are removed. We’ll need to get our best surgeons to figure out how to determine where the chips are located, and then identify the best means to safely remove them.” He looked thoughtful. “They’ll need time to heal before we move them to the Cavern; traveling might cause a lot of discomfort.”
Adam nodded. “Agreed. I wrote some notes explaining my understanding about the chips in a bit more detail before my lengthy nap during the trip here.” As had become their custom, Adam was given a deep sleeping potion at an Alliance safe house only he used prior to boarding a submarine for transport to the cabin. He’d written his notes at the house before receiving his injection. “It’s by no means complete, but it should be a solid start to a process for detecting and removing the chips.” He rifled through the papers in his stack of notes before removing two pages filled with his tiny scrawl. Adam handed the pages to Will.
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