Preserving Will

by Alex Albrinck

  The elder Adam had experienced that reversal, and during that time sans ambrosia had fathered his only child, a son who bore his name and likeness. Eva had asked the elder Adam about the process and had interviewed Ambrose as well, and had confirmed that the initial effects would be felt once the injected blood had the chance to circulate through the body once. After four or five cycles, ambrosia would be flushed out of the circulatory system, rendering the person both mortal and fertile within minutes.

  She wondered if the reversal would hurt. Eva hadn’t asked, and Adam had not volunteered an answer.

  There was only one way to find out.

  Gingerly, she picked up her vial and tried to twist the top off. It was stuck. After thirty seconds of wrestling, she felt the top budge, and she spun it until it came off. She attached the hypodermic needle to the top and pulled the plunger back, drawing the blood into the syringe. After setting the syringe down on the table and putting the top back on the vial, she located the cord she’d stored on a bookshelf, and tied it around her upper left arm, cutting off the circulation and causing veins to stand out on her skin.

  Hope picked up the syringe and stared at the red substance visible through the clear surface. She was about to inject herself with Arthur’s blood, blood from a man who was the epitome of pure evil. Would that blood, cleansed of the effects of the ambrosia that had kept the man alive for centuries, taint her, corrupt her, and turn her into… him?

  “No, I’m Genevieve’s daughter,” Hope whispered. “That’s the blood that defines me. Not his. His blood is just the means to a wonderful end.”

  Without further hesitation, she jabbed the needle into a raised vein in her left arm and depressed the plunger, gasping at the sharp pain as the needle pierced her flesh. With the blood injected, she withdrew the needle and tossed the syringe into an empty trash can. She watched as the tiny piercing stitched closed before her eyes, an effect caused by her enhanced healing abilities and the internal nanos Will had transferred into her body over the centuries. She sat down and closed her eyes, hoping she’d done the right thing at the right time.

  “I got your note.”

  She stood quickly. The voice was strange, the Energy sound buzzing near her unfamiliar. But there was only one man who could utter that sentence. She turned and looked at him.

  “I look different. I know I do.” He didn’t move, but didn’t take his eyes off her, unapologetically drinking in her image. “It’s necessary for me to change everything that the world can see or sense about me in order to continue to do my work. To be the change I want in this world.”

  She watched as his image slowly morphed, the hair assuming the familiar jet black color, the eyes sparkling the deep shade of green she knew so well. Moments later, he looked like himself, like the man she’d just sent off for an unnecessary infertility treatment.

  “Will?” Her whisper still bore a hint of doubt.

  “I figured out, finally, what the messages from the diary meant.” It was his voice, not the voice who’d addressed her after teleporting into the bunker. “Why they always talked about there being no record of Will Stark. Why those messages always used the name, Will Stark, rather than just stating that it was me who’d vanished for all time. It was only when I was on the verge of leaving for the casino that I realized that it was the name that disappeared. I’d need to transform myself, to abandon the name of Will Stark to history and legend, and I’d need an event to convince as many Aliomenti and Alliance as possible that I’d died to accomplish that feat. But I also needed to do so with sufficient mystery. The Aliomenti would then wonder if I was gone, and they’d spend their time looking for the face and Energy signature they knew as Will Stark. They wouldn’t look for what I might become.”

  Hope nodded. “No one believes you died, though,” she told him. “Not now, not anymore. The Aliomenti… they’re convinced it was some elaborate scheme meant to destroy them. The Alliance… to them, it’s part of the legend, how Will Stark has the Aliomenti on the run chasing shadows after his alleged death at the hands of the Hunters. The core team is so convinced that you’re alive that they keep telling me that you’ll be the one to teleport me and Josh here to save us from the Assassin.” Her tone on the last point was slightly bitter, reflecting her anger at the implication in the messages from the future that she’d be unable to teleport herself and her son a few yards.

  Will nodded, and she noticed that the Energy sound emanating from him was changing, strengthening, the tone moving more and more toward the violin sound she knew so well. “I’ll be here that day, no matter what, because it will give me a chance to see what truly happened for the first time. My eyes weren’t working well at the end of it all the first time around.” He smiled, and then frowned. “But I don’t expect to be doing any teleportation for you and Josh that day, regardless of what any diary might say, or what our future friends told me directly. I think that wording was there to help me realize I needed to survive that day thirty years ago, to remind me that I have to be here when it all unfolds. But I don’t take it literally.”

  Hope nodded. He believed in her, at least. And she couldn’t deny him the right to be there that day, not given the historical importance of those events.

  And if anything did go wrong… if she actually did fail to move them to safety… if she actually did need help? Well, Will would be there as her backup, ready to step in.

  She switched topics. “Your Energy sounded… different. But it’s changing.”

  He looked thoughtful. “I hid for a long time, probably not where you thought, but I did hide. And I spent time thinking, trying to figure out how I could live in hiding for so long without going crazy. My Shielding is good, but eventually I’ll mess up and let it drop at the wrong time. With someone like Porthos, who can sense anything from anywhere, that’s a risk I couldn’t take. I didn’t want you having to hide the truth about me in a Cavern full of people who’d want to know where I might be hiding out.” He considered. “Changing my appearance? That was straightforward. But I realized I needed to do something with my Energy. I didn’t know how to turn it off, and there were practical concerns with doing that anyway. So I began to wonder if I could change the Energy, make it sound different, so that whatever identification mechanism Porthos has no longer ties my Energy to the man he knows as Will Stark. Over the course of a couple of years, with nothing else to occupy my time, I learned to recalibrate my Energy so it gives off a different signal, and that’s why it sounded different to you. It freed me to travel in public, to walk right by Porthos without him recognizing me. It was just like that trip we took to test scutarium all those years ago.” He smiled at the memory. “Now I can go out into the world and help people, without worrying about being detected.”

  “You’ll have to teach me that trick at some point.”

  “Of course.” He paused. “It was you, wasn’t it? That day, years ago, when my parents died? You were there, weren’t you? Protecting me, making sure I survived something that should have killed me.”

  Hope nodded. It hadn’t been long for her. But for Will, this Will, it would have happened centuries ago. “Nothing could prevent me from being there. You needed me that day. You’ve been there for me a few times in the past, and that was a chance for me to return the favor.” She considered. “And you might do so again in the future.”

  His face showed doubt, but he nodded nevertheless. “Hope, why did you leave me that note? Why ask me to come here, on this date, at this time?” His smile was weak. “I’m not complaining about your company, of course; far from it. But that note was… different.”

  She didn’t answer right away. Instead, she moved back to the table and began transferring the second vial’s contents into a syringe.

  “I went to the original Nautilus a few months after… the event,” she said. “I went there as part of a trip I took to check in on the newborn you. It seemed like the place you’d go, and it fit with the information I had. Lots of Energy from the telep
ortation effort, a location that only you and I knew about, a place with scutarium plating so you could use Energy to heal up from whatever wounds you’d suffered. But I found… nothing. It was as if you’d never been there. Still, I suspected you’d go there eventually, assuming you still lived.” She stared at him. “How did you survive? How is it that you’re here? Did you make a sword splitter from those futuristic nanos you have?”

  “That might have worked, and I thought about using that approach,” he admitted. “The problem with that was that if the nano splitter failed… well, I really didn’t want to get stabbed. I had far too much yet to do with my life to have it end that day.” He shook his head. “I used a newer Alliance technology. The good news was that I was never directly at risk.”

  “But, how…?” Her eyes widened as understanding dawned. “It was a clone.”

  He nodded. “When I realized what I needed to do, I approached Aaron. He’s been doing cloning tests for years, and he’s constantly testing it out on different people to refine the technique, and always looking for volunteers. Those clones all die within a week or so of being born, though. But that was exactly what I needed. I asked him to make one of me, and to prioritize the effort, because I wanted to see the result before I left. I made sure my clone stayed asleep, told Aaron that it had died in a terrible accident, and got him aboard the craft surrounded with those futuristic nanos you mentioned so he was invisible. Adam never noticed. When we got to the casino, I teleported both of us out of the craft. After Adam flew off, I modified my own memories in the sleeping clone, enough to understand what needed to be done as far as that mission, but also to believe that I—my clone—still had the sword splitter on. I hid myself, with the rest of those futuristic nanos, staying close the whole time. When Porthos stabbed my clone… well, it was a fatal wound, and I think the clone’s belief that I had the splitter on made the clone so shocked that he forgot to teleport away. So I teleported both of us to the submarine, just as you suspected, and allowed him to believe he’d done it on instinct, and gave him the time and the space he needed for the wound take its fatal toll. I did alleviate the pain somewhat. It’s really tough to watch something that’s basically you die a slow, painful death. When he passed on, I pulverized the body with Energy and allowed it to float out into the sea, cleaned up all traces of our presence, including the Energy, and left.” He paused. “I thought you’d go there, realizing it was the only place I could go, notice that everything was gone, and recognize that it must mean I’d survived the attack. That I’d gone into hiding, as I’ve always known I must, even though it meant being away from you in this… maturity level.” He gave a faint smile, a look replaced by a brooding face once more. “You found my clues, my message that I’d survived, and you maintained the illusion that you believed me dead all the time before going to the sub… and in all the time since. Yet when you reached the Nautilus, you left a note asking me to come here, to this exact spot, at this time, on this date. Why?”

  She hesitated a moment before answering. “I watch your memories of the future quite a bit. I love watching the children, seeing them as adults. It was encouraging to see that I’d managed to raise two children to adulthood with some degree of success.”

  Will nodded, encouraging her to continue.

  “But I watched the other memories of the future as well, especially the one where Adam explains what the different clothing colors meant. That… bothered me.”

  Will frowned. “Why?”

  “Based upon his explanation, Josh and Angel’s clothing should have been the same color. They have the same parents after all, right?” She paused. “But that wasn’t the case. Josh’s—Fil’s—clothing was jet black. Angel’s was a dark green. When I worked out the color coding, figured out the relative power levels, the difference was exponential in nature. Even with a seven year head start, Josh had no advantage over his sister that could have explained what I’d recognized. The difference was too great for two adults with the same parents.”

  Will cocked his head, thinking. “Perhaps Josh spent more time developing Energy than Angel did. He did have a few centuries to widen the gap from their respective births.”

  Hope shook her head. “Adam said that Josh’s clothing color meant he was a special case. So much of what they told you in the future contained hidden messages. I think that was a message as well. There’s something unique about Josh that explains why he was so much more powerful than his sister.”

  Will thought for a moment, and then his face clouded. “Are you suggesting…?”

  Hope shook her head. “They have the same parents, Will.” She paused. “But they were born at different times.”

  “Of course they were,” Will said, confused. “What does that have to do with…”

  He stopped, and a look of surprise covered his face.

  Hope nodded. “The children of Energy users inherit a level of power that’s a multiple or exponent of the power level of their parents. We know that my Energy levels, over the course of the six or seven years separating them in age, would remain nearly constant. That means that your Energy levels would have to explain that difference. Angel’s clothing color is about what my coloring was when we tested out the arm bands. That means that your levels at her birth were essentially nothing. But for Josh? Your Energy levels were massive. As if you’d contributed a thousand years or more worth of Energy development to your son.”

  He stared at her, and then at the syringe. “Are you saying…?”

  She nodded. “Adam was there the day you were born. He collected the blood of your parents, not certain why he did so. When we mapped the date I’d need to inject Arthur’s blood, and the date Josh would be conceived, and the date of Young Will’s trip to the infertility specialist… I knew you needed to be here this day to ensure your son becomes who he’s meant to be. Not the young Will. The older Will, the man who’s spent centuries fighting to keep his wife alive, to ensure his children are born. You, old Will, are Josh’s father.”

  She handed Will the syringe.

  He accepted it. And with a knowing smile, he jabbed the needle into his arm and depressed the plunger.

  XII

  City

  2026 A.D.

  “Look, Josh!” Hope said. “See the big building where Daddy works?”

  Josh Stark sat between his parents in the rear compartment of the limousine, his ice blue eyes devoid of all emotion and expression. Will often wondered just how much their son saw, heard, and understood of the world around him. Josh had met all physical developmental guidelines, but for reasons medical doctors could not explain, he’d never developed the ability to communicate verbally.

  Hope could tell them exactly what was happening.

  From the first instant she felt him moving inside her, she could sense the child’s immense Energy capacity, burning like a raging fire within. Will could sense it as well; when he placed his hands on her protruding belly, the Energy within zapped him like a burst of static electricity. Josh was greeting his father in utero. Will thought they needed to get the house humidifier serviced.

  Hope worried that, as a newborn, Josh’s lack of control over a power that would soon easily eclipse her own would prove a danger, a beacon to Hunters looking for unexplained bursts of Energy throughout the globe. Hope’s personal Shielding would mask her son until he emerged into the bright light of the world and learned to control those bursts on his own. The effort required to maintain that Shield was immense.

  Yet despite the great exertion, Hope found her pregnancy a joy. The telepathic bond she developed with her son enabled a depth to their relationship that most mothers and fathers couldn’t fathom. She held conversations with her child in utero, teaching him about life, about the Energy he possessed, about the responsibility he’d need to develop for controlling that Energy, concepts he wouldn’t really understand until he was older. She explained that other people in the world might be frightened of his ability, might seek to hurt him because of it, and
that his mother would protect him and make sure those evil people didn’t succeed.

  That proved far easier said than done. Shielding Josh while she continued to carry him was one problem, but in practical terms it was the same thing as Shielding her own Energy, an act that had become automatic for her over the centuries. It simply took more effort.

  Shielding him once he was born meant she needed to keep two Shields up at all times. The mental effort to remember, combined with the strength it took to restrain the nuclear levels of Energy the boy’s body sought to throw off, drained her each day. Will thought the often haggard look on her face derived from anguish over Josh’s inability to speak, but that wasn’t the case. She conversed with Josh regularly, at a deeper level than Will would be able to comprehend right now. Her fatigue was exacerbated by her sense of remorse over leaving Will in the dark, as usual, about what was really happening with their son. Her husband suffered from guilt, borne of a belief that the treatment that had allowed him to give his son life had somehow rendered the child mute. The mental anguish for Hope far exceeded the suffering she’d endured as a child at the hands of Arthur.

  And the fear that she’d lose focus, that she’d allow Josh’s Energy—or hers—to leak led to near panic attacks every time the two of them ventured out in public. The closest thing to a fight she’d ever had with Will occurred when she’d insisted upon going with Will and Josh on a father-son outing, her comments leading Will to believe that she didn’t trust him to care for his son. He didn’t know, couldn’t know, that he could never protect Josh from the greatest threats facing the boy.