The kneeling people did not stand up, but the ones mumbling prayers stopped and all listened to her. Erika’s Aunt Dana had eyed him suspiciously since she’d first met him. The new information made her face turn ashen and her mouth gape. Her eyes darted between Erika and Tex as though she was trying to determine if what Erika said was true.
Erika continued. “Our world is in grave danger. What’s happening in Europe is not a terrorist attack as you’ve been told.”
Again, the crowd grew louder with talk amongst themselves.
Erika held up her hand for silence. “Europe has been attacked by aliens.” She put her hand on Tex’s shoulder. “This man is the only one who has the knowledge that can save us from being destroyed.”
Smith laughed out loud. “Alien invasion?” His eyes were wide, his voice incredulous. “Just listen to what she says. This creature is the spawn of Satan, not a savior from the future.” He pointed a thin finger at Erika. “And her?” He spat the words out as if they tasted awful. “She is the devil’s minion. She was with him every step of the way as he slaughtered your brothers in blue. In fact, we suspect she may have pulled the trigger a few times herself.”
Erika’s fingers, still on Tex’s shoulder, tensed.
Tex’s mind twitched with a desire to terminate the man. Killing was, after all, what he had been created and trained to do. Cutting off the man’s air supply was instinctual, but if he wanted to keep the trust of Niyol and his family and tribe, and to gain the trust of the law-enforcement officers, he needed to show restraint. “I have had nearly enough of this Smith fellow,” Tex whispered to Erika.
“A savior shows mercy,” she whispered back, her voice laden with sarcasm.
Tex had no desire to be the savior of these people. In fact, he still teetered in indecision about whether he wanted to help them at all, but in order to give Erika a chance at survival, he had to assist them as well. He had no indecisiveness about his desire to help Erika.
He stepped toward Smith, and the man’s face lost its perpetual sneer of disapproval. Smith tried to step back, but the sheriff and Aunt Dana hemmed him in.
“Back off, creature,” Smith said.
Tex was at Smith’s side in a few quick strides, his legs a blur as he moved. Tex smoothly took the gun from Smith’s trembling hands and tossed it to the ground. He placed his hands on either side of the man’s head and tried something he had never attempted before.
“What’s he doing?” one of the men in black shouted. “Don’t let him kill Smith.”
Erika said, “He’s not going to kill him. He’s just calming him down.”
Tex dropped the protective shield he had worn about himself ever since the Makers men had appeared. Maintaining the shield took a great amount of energy, and he needed all of his concentration on Smith’s thoughts and memories. Because the force field was invisible, he hoped the Makers still believed he had it around him and would not waste their bullets.
Smith’s mind was like a filing cabinet with the doors flung open, its contents strewn everywhere. His thoughts flitted from the command given to “bring the rogue hybrid down by whatever means necessary” to memories of running into a bombed-out building, bloody bodies covered in dust strewn about the floor. A vision of the man’s wife and his secret loathing of her but adoration of his young daughter flitted into the man’s conscious thoughts. That was followed by Smith’s feeling that he was not worthy of the little girl’s love. He had done many things for which he felt deep shame.
Tex knew all that and more in less than a minute. The man was more deserving of pity than ire. Smith’s face twisted with pain. Tex knew well the agony the man was in because he had felt it every time the Conexus infiltrated his mind against his will.
Tex had never before attempted to rewrite a person’s circuitry. He was not confident that he could, but he gave it a go. He interfaced even more deeply with Smith. With each memory of his time with the Makers organization, from recruitment until the last order from his supervisor in Phoenix, Tex overlaid the memory with a new story. The word “hybrid” was replaced with words like “protector” or “valuable asset.” Tex deleted any reference to killing Tex and replaced it with words such as “defend” and “obey.”
Smith whimpered.
Erika called out to Tex, “Stop. You’re hurting him.”
Tex pulled himself from the man’s mind and caught Smith before he fell to the ground. He wasn’t sure that rewriting the man’s memories was better than simply killing him. Tex had violated the man. He knew what that felt like, too. The Regina had violated him in a similar way.
But if he was to gain the trust of the humans around him—and he needed their trust—then he could not kill Smith or any of the other men. If he was to prevent the alien enemies, the M’Uktah, from annihilating the human population and prevent the humans from ending life on the planet in a failed attempt at protecting themselves, all would need to work together.
Smith’s eyes were bleary as though from waking. He blinked rapidly and looked up at Tex. His eyes were wide and wet with tears. “You are… you’re the one.” His voice was a hushed whisper and full of awe.
Tex merely nodded and took his hands from the man. Tex had no time to feed the mythology and adulation that the humans created around him, seemingly growing with each second. His mind was on shutting down the intragalactic highway the M’Uktah used to get to Earth. “I need to go to a place that I believe is near here. There is an area in the desert with many large radio telescopes. Do you know the place of which I speak?”
Smith nodded but it was the Sheriff that answered. “The Very Large Array. The VLA. That’s what you’re talking about.”
“How far is it from here?” Tex asked.
The sheriff scratched at his beard. “Sixty, maybe seventy miles, I suppose.”
“Good. You will take me there.”
18
WilliAM CroFt
The elevator opened onto the Croft penthouse vestibule, which was empty save for one man in a black uniform sitting at a lone desk. The uniformed guard stood when he saw William in the open door of the elevator.
“Sir Croft.” He stood at attention and saluted William.
Croft ignored the guard and pushed open the glass doors to his penthouse apartment overlooking Central Park. He had not told Lizzy or the penthouse staff he was coming, so they were not expecting him. He assumed the possibility that Lizzy would not be there at all or that he would find her hidden away in her suite, nursing her wounded ego after his ass-chewing lecture over the phone.
He did not have to search for her, though. Lizzy was on the creamy marble floor on her hands and knees, her long hair a cascade of brown covering her face as she scoured bloodstains with a scrub brush. She dipped the brush into a bucket of sudsy water and went back to the floor flecked with red.
William walked quietly toward her and stood on the damp marble she had just washed. “You can take the girl out of the slums, but you cannot make her into a lady. Pygmalion was a fantasy.”
Lizzy stared up at him, her eyes rimmed in red, and her mouth set in a frown. “I thought you would be impressed, father, that I am cleaning up my own mess rather than relying on servants. Isn’t that what you always say? ‘Handle your own messes, Lizzy.’”
He kicked the bucket, sending water and soap spilling across the shining floor. “And is this how you handle messes? By blowing the brains out of our allies? By creating a colossal disaster, the likes of which not even your idiot brother Evers achieved?”
Seeing her on her hands and knees like a housekeeper made his blood boil. Lizzy was his daughter by his beloved mistress, Carolina. He had allowed Carolina to raise the child as a commoner rather than taking Lizzy into his home to be raised by his late wife. Lizzy had not grown up in a world of mansions and penthouses, of private jets and chauffeured limousines to school. Not until year ten of her education had he brought her into the world of the Makers.
She had proven herself the brightes
t and most loyal of his three children. He personally groomed her to be the heir apparent, to take his place as the head of the Inner Circle of the Makers someday. Bending knee to floor was beneath their station even if she was cleaning up the blood she had spilled.
He hissed at her, “Get up.”
She stood, her hands tightly balled fists at her side. Her chin was up, her face defiant. Her strong will was both an asset to him and a liability. While her brothers lacked the backbone to make the hard decisions sometimes required of a leader of the Makers, Lizzy had no difficulty doing the hard things, but her decisions were often rash with youth and inexperience. Also, she was all too willing to take a life in order to please him. This time she had taken the wrong life, and no matter what either of them did, she could never make that right.
“It is not my fault, father. Anna and Thomas—”
His bony knuckles made contact with her jaw, whipping her head to the side as he backhanded her. A red mark bloomed on her face, but to her credit, she neither cried out nor moved away. Lizzy simply glared up at him with brown eyes so dark with anger that they looked black.
“Do not blame others for your failings.”
“I don’t know why you’re so angry. I took care of that boil in your side, Robert Sturgis.”
William pulled back his hand, ready to strike her again, but he did not let the second blow fall. His anger was so great he feared that if he let loose and struck her he might break her jaw. His voice was a low, seething whisper. “Do not speak to me of Robert Sturgis ever again. He was an asset to our organization that cannot be replaced.”
“Should I have taken out Anna instead?” Her voice lilted with a mocking tone. “Pretty, pretty Anna. She’s not so beautiful now, Father. But knowing Anna, she’ll make eye patches and ugly face scars become fashion trends.”
He shook his head. “We are the Makers, Lizzy, not the mafia. Your work was sloppy, and the petty jealousy is trashy and beneath you. That is not how the Makers do things.”
“Daddy, please do tell me how we do things.” She put her finger to her chin and pretended to think hard. “Oh, I know. We make an unnecessarily complicated plan, trust the wrong people, then have it fail spectacularly, just like this whole hybrid thing has.”
His hand again flew to her face. Blood trickled from her nose, but she stood tall, her face still held in a insolent mask.
William’s face was inches from hers. “You know nothing.” His voice was low. “Anna Sturgis was genetically engineered to be perfect, you idiot. You didn’t think that any one person could naturally be that beautiful and intelligent and physically strong without a bit of help. Even we of the blood could not naturally produce such a specimen as her.” His voice now boomed. “And you nearly killed her.”
While William’s father had masterminded the plan for the Makers to occupy an underground city to survive the M’Uktah attack, William had seen the potential for the Makers to use their time below ground to give humanity a boost down the evolutionary highway. Anna and Thomas had been genetically engineered to be smarter, stronger, and more attractive than even the upper echelon of the population. Though something had clearly gone wrong with Thomas, Anna had proven to be all he had hoped for. Between Sturgis’s cloning techniques, perfected through her work in the H.A.L.F. program, and genetic material from Anna, the Makers would be able to create a small army of superhumans ready to repopulate the world once the M’Uktah would purge the population.
Lizzy’s petulant stare turned to a sheepish wonderment. “I… I did not know.”
William threw up his hands. “Of course you did not know. Because I did not share that with you.” He wiped his face again with his handkerchief. “You know so very little, Lizzy. Do not forget that. You are a pup. And you will not live to become the alpha dog if you don’t learn your place.”
He leaned closer again and glowered down at her. He kept his voice calm. He had discovered that sometimes, cool serenity was more effective than yelling for putting fear into people. “You will do as I say when I say it, or you will find yourself sharing a hole in the ground with your late brother. Do you understand me?”
Lizzy swallowed. All defiance had evaporated out of her. When she spoke, her voice cracked. “I do understand, Father.”
He hoped that she did. Perhaps having her mother raise her as a commoner had been a mistake. She had an unnecessarily large need to please him, coupled with an overall lack of grace and propriety. The whole purpose of William’s plan was to preserve and indeed enhance the refinement and poise of those of the blood. The Makers and all his efforts meant nothing if they were no better than the common rabble.
William neatly folded his handkerchief and placed it back in his inside coat pocket. “Clean yourself up, and pack. We leave for Arizona in the morning.”
Lizzy opened her mouth as if to ask a question but closed it. William left her standing in the puddle of water, her knees still wet from scrubbing the floor.
He opened the double doors to his spacious suite and was pleased to find it immaculately clean. The morning paper was on his desk, along with a pot of warm water, tea, and lemon wedges with the seeds removed for his morning ritual of drinking warm lemon water. At least the butler here can get things right.
He was tired from the journey and sat heavily in the chair. He loosened his tie and poured the warm water before he noticed someone sitting on one of the armchairs in the alcove of windows overlooking the park.
She sat with her legs crossed, her hands resting on the arms of the chair. “You look like hell,” Hannah Sturgis said.
He did not doubt that he did, but the same could not be said of Hannah. Anna’s DNA might have been genetically engineered, but she got her beauty from nature’s engineering. Though in her late-middle years, Hannah was as strikingly beautiful as she had been in her youth. She wore her blond hair long, and not a hint of gray was in it. Hannah’s eyes were the blue of a clear summer day in the high mountains. Her skin was smooth, with only the barest hint of laugh lines. Her legs were long and well toned. Her high cheeks and aquiline nose looked as though a master sculptor had chiseled them, tasked with recreating the loveliness of a Greek goddess.
With anyone else, William would have played a coy game of cat and mouse, of one-upmanship and rapier wit until the other person tired of it and left him to his thoughts.
She, however, was his beloved cousin Hannah. Though she was seven years younger than he, they had been the closest of friends in childhood. They shared a bond of secrets that only the close ties of family can provide.
He went to her without words, fell to his knees at her feet, wrapped his arms around her waist, and buried his head in her lap and wept. “Please do not blame me. I did not ask her to kill him.”
At first, Hannah remained stiff, her hands still gripping the arms of the chair. After a few moments , though, she stroked his hair. “She is not fit to replace you, Wills. You know that, don’t you?”
He did not look at her—he could not look at her—but he mumbled, “Yes.”
“Look at me,” Hanna said. It was a command, not a request.
William lifted his head. He had not cried in years and was unused to bleary, puffy eyes.
Her cheeks were also wet with tears. He wiped them away with his thumb. His touch was as gentle with Hannah as it had been harsh with Lizzy.
“I am so entirely sorry,” he whispered.
“You should be,” Hannah said. Her voice was not bitter or sarcastic. The sheer matter-of-fact coldness and truth of the statement made him wince with guilt.
“He was my friend too, Hannah. I will miss him as well.” He knew that would not sway her anger or blame, but he said it anyway.
She took a deep breath as if to calm herself and hold in her tears. “The worst part—” She put a hand to her mouth as her voice cracked with emotion. Hannah sucked in another breath and began again. “The worst part is that Anna and Thomas no longer have the chance to reconcile with him. With Robert dead,
he can no longer make things right with them.”
“He would not have had need to ‘make things right’ if Thomas had stayed the bloody hell out of things.”
Her hand was quick, and his reflexes were slow from lack of sleep. Her hand met the flesh of his face. He might not have stopped her even if he had been able to, though. He deserved the pain.
“You do not get to blame my children for being the intelligent, inquisitive people that they were engineered to be. And after all you’ve put Thomas through…” Her voice was a low hiss. “Do not ever speak to me of him again.”
They locked eyes. His eyes plead with her to end their spat. Hers bore back into his with the pent-up anger she had harbored for years over his attempts to eliminate Thomas from the Makers stock. While William had never disputed that Thomas was extraordinarily gifted in mathematics and computer engineering, he was emotionally unstable. Thomas was hardly the pinnacle of perfection that William could clone and thus was useless to the Makers and the ultimate plan.
He could do nothing—offer nothing—to end her ire, and he desperately wanted to have Hannah on his side. William had lost both his sons and wife. Robert, his closest ally, was dead, and Lizzy, though of the blood, was young and inexperienced. He could not share the burdens of his station with her as he could with Hannah. His cousin understood him, perhaps as no other ever had.
He offered the only thing he had left to give her. “I promise you, my beloved, that I will not harm Anna.”
Her eyes softened, but only a bit. Her jaw was still clenched.
“Or Thomas,” he added. Though Thomas’s genetic material could not be harvested, he remained a potential asset to the Makers. Thomas was worth two or three of the ordinary computer geniuses that William kept on the payroll.
H.A.L.F.: ORIGINS Page 14
