A Question of Will

by Alex Albrinck

  “What do you mean?”

  “I’m seeing the Energy all around us, so clearly you’re sending quite a bit out. Yet your Energy levels are actually rising faster than that. They should be dipping, at least for a short while, until your body can regenerate its stores.” Adam seemed genuinely baffled at the phenomenon.

  Will shrugged. “I don’t know how to explain it, either.” He told the story of seeing the young tree here, and feeling compelled to send it Energy, and that somehow this helped the tree grow rapidly and resulted in more Energy coming back to Will than he was sending. “I guess it’s like it is in nature. We breathe out carbon dioxide used by plants, and they send back oxygen we breathe in. Why it’s stronger than before, though, I can’t explain.”

  Fil nodded. “As interesting as that is, we do need to focus on the problem at hand. Angel said that you escaped Headquarters in a manner likely to draw a violent response. True?”

  “Correct. Aramis took me to The Assassin, but I was able to use my nanos to deflect the blow and Aramis was stabbed instead. I fought with The Assassin, and in the skirmish his gun fell free. I retrieved it, shot him, and teleported out.” Will frowned. “But I think I had help.”

  “What do you mean?” Angel asked.

  “The Assassin was talking to me in my head. Telling me what to do, how to beat him as we were fighting after Aramis was stabbed. Told me to throw him and the gun would fall; I didn’t know he carried a gun. Told me to shoot him non-fatally and make it seem like I was interested in him suffering more than killing him. He gave me an image of a place to teleport to in order to get out of the building.” Will looked at the men and woman standing with him. “He said to tell his master that he did as ordered. Any of you know what that means?”

  “I have a hunch,” Fil said. “One of our members has a knack for creating specialized nanos. It sounds like something he would try.”

  “But how did he get them into The Assassin?” Will asked. “When would they have met?”

  “We picked up more than just you at the house that night,” Angel said. “The Assassin, the man sent to murder your family...we captured him and brought him back to hold as a captive.”

  “It was a risky plan,” Fil said. “Like you, he brought inherent trouble, perhaps even more. You would only cause harm through inaction but without intent; The Assassin would willingly inflict great harm. If the devices meant to contain him didn’t hold, or the reprogramming didn’t work...it could have been a problem for all of us.”

  “But it appears that it did work,” Adam noted. “We may be down to only two Hunters, and The Assassin will be unable to go on any official missions for a time if you shot him.”

  Will pulled out the gun. “This looks familiar. Something else you pulled out of my house?”

  Fil simply nodded.

  “Anything else about that night you want to tell me?” Will asked, fixing a pointed stare at the trio.

  Angel fidgeted. “Your dog survived. She’s back in camp right now.”

  Will blinked, and a foggy memory of seeing the injured animal on Fil’s lap in the escape vehicle appeared in his mind. “Why didn’t you let me see her? What would be the harm in letting me see Smokey?”

  “You would have wondered why we were able to save Smokey, and not... others.” Angel looked quite unhappy at saying this.

  “Seems a fair question, though,” Will noted. “You rescued me from a beating, found my dog and the man sent to kill my family. Why could you not save my wife and son?”

  “They were already gone when I got there,” Fil said. “I could get The Assassin and the dog. But not them.”

  Will stared at the man. “With the technology I’ve seen here since I arrived, I dare say you could have saved them. Why not try?” The Energy coming from Will now was powerful enough that the air was sizzling, and it was doubtful to all present that the intensity was due solely to the interaction with the trees.

  “They were gone.” Fil fixed him with what was likely a deadly stare through those sunglasses, as if offended at being challenged. “As in, they were not there. I could not find them. Therefore, I could not rescue them.”

  “I thought you said that they were dead?” Will snarled, advancing on Fil.

  “No. I’ve said they were gone every time you’ve asked. I cannot help you to comprehend what the word means.”

  “You used a word commonly meant to indicate death, especially in the context of a raging house fire and an Assassin sent after those people. Any sane, decent person would know that and avoid using the expression.” Will jabbed a finger at Fil. “Unless you wanted me to think them dead.”

  Fil shoved Will with both hands. “Take that back! There’s no reason whatsoever I’d want to deceive you!”

  Angel jumped between them. “Both of you need to stop it! Right now!” The two men continued to glare at each other, but backed away. “Fil wasn’t clear, but there’s no reason to think he’d want to deceive you. I would know if he’d tried.”

  “Shut up, sis,” Fil muttered.

  Will’s eyes widened. “She’s your sister?” he asked Fil.

  Fil nodded, and Angel elbowed Fil gently. “My overprotective big brother. Always playing the alpha male lest anyone try anything to hurt me.” Will was shocked to see a slight smile form on Fil’s face.

  Will shook his head. “You people are full of surprises,” he said. He glanced at Adam. “What about you? You their cousin or something?”

  Adam chuckled. “Thanks for not asking if I’m their uncle.” All four laughed.

  “So, about that night you pulled me and others away from my burning house,” Will said. “Anybody care to tell me exactly when that was? Relative to, say, today?” He arched an eyebrow.

  Three heads dropped. “Oh.” Angel said. “That.”

  “Yes. That.” Will glanced among the faces. “Why on earth would you find me and drug me into a sleep for almost two centuries?”

  Adam frowned. “But you weren’t drugged. Who told you that? The Leader or one of the Hunters?”

  Will nodded. “They figured out pretty quickly that I think it’s about two months after the events at my house. They corrected that minor oversight. I’m sure it just slipped your minds to mention it. Needless to say, not having anyone tell me that rather critical piece of information tends to make me less than trusting about anything any of you say from this point forward.” He fixed a glare at Fil. “And question the motivation for what I am told.”

  “They were half right,” Adam said. “Yes, it’s far into the future. But we didn’t drug you into some kind of suspended animation all this time.” He glanced at Fil, then at Angel, and both of them nodded at him. “When we rescued you from the yard and the house that night, the craft that we used...it was a time machine.”

  Will blinked. Then he laughed. “Right. I know, at this point I’m supposed to believe anything. But a time machine? No. That part I cannot believe. I will not believe.”

  Angel walked to Will, and put a hand on his arm, and he could feel the calming Energy she was sending his way. “It’s a lot to take, I’m sure. But you know we’re telling the truth.”

  “I don’t know anything!” Will screamed. “Do you understand just how much every part of my life has been completely turned upside-down? I’d like to think I’ve handled everything really well, truly I do. But right now I don’t even know who I am! Am I some amazing Energy-wielding warrior traitor who had his memory wiped clean and became a business tycoon only to sleep for two centuries and wake up not remembering anything? Or was I truly born in the year 1995 and brought forward in time after my family was killed by some crazed murderer? Something else entirely? Oh wait, the killer said he failed in his mission to kill my family, which means that they were still alive at some point, and nobody saw them. Then this same man, the man who wanted to kill my wife, and then my son when he learned of Josh’s existence, this trained Assassin suddenly helps me escape from captivity, because somebody put some tiny robots
in his brain. And on top of it all I seem to attract trouble wherever I go. I’d like to go home, back to being that businessman, and just go out to that nice dinner with my family. And I’d like to see my son. Do you know he never talked? I never heard his voice. All I want is to go home and hear his voice, and tell him I love him. Is that too much to ask?”

  Will felt his knees sag, and he let himself fall to the ground. “I just want to go home, to my family,” he whispered. “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

  Angel went to him, tears in her eyes as she knelt down and put a comforting arm around him. Fil’s face was its usual mask, yet there were tremors there of some unspeakable emotion. Adam looked at the siblings, and then at Will. He knelt down in front of the man.

  “Will,” he said, “I think we can make that happen.”

  XXIV

  Question

  They gave Will time to regain control following his emotional outburst, and then the group made its next moves.

  Will put a very tight Shield up, hiding his Energy so well that none of the trio could sense anything, even standing next to him. Each of the trio did a thorough search of Will and his clothing, to ensure that the Elites had not placed any type of tracking device on Will, and found nothing. Fil generated a flying craft of nanos, and the four climbed in. No one spoke as Fil carefully piloted the craft through the trees; he avoided breaking through the top canopy so that the Elites couldn’t search for them with satellites. Nobody wanted to speak and break concentration on the Shield Will had established.

  They landed at camp an hour later. Will climbed out of the craft, still rather numb from the revelations of the past twenty-four hours. He walked to the edge of the camp and sat with his back against one of the large trees encircling the clearing, pulling his knees to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. His mind was in shambles as he tried to make sense of everything. The emotion he’d kept bottled up for two months, as he absorbed and accepted with calm the massive paradigm shifts he’d undergone, had finally burst forth and taken its toll.

  Fil walked over to him a short while later, the sunlight reflecting off his ever-present mirrored sunglasses, his face softer than Will had ever seen it. He gave a faint smile when Will glanced up at him. “I thought you might want to visit with someone.” Fil turned and whistled, and Will saw a black Labrador Retriever come trotting out from behind one of the buildings.

  Will stared at the dog, and the dog stared back, frozen.

  “Smokey?” Will whispered. The dog’s tail began to twitch, shuddering with the effort, as if overcome by a powerful emotion she couldn’t otherwise express. “C’mere, girl!” Will said, louder, and patted the ground next to him, stretching his legs out. The dog started to him, slowly at first, then at a full sprint, eventually slowing down only because her tail was wagging with such force that she couldn’t walk straight. She darted to Will with a joy that only a dog can express, licking his face as he wrapped his arms around her neck, hugging the only family member he still had with him, his face moist for reasons other than the dog’s wet kisses. Smokey curled up next to him, then crawled into his lap, and Will laughed as he watched the dog try to fit her too-large frame onto his too-small lap. She settled for nestling next to him, her chin rested on his leg, her tail still twitching with joy. Will was content to scratch the dog’s head, and remember the times he’d seen her nestled up against Josh in the same manner.

  Will realized Fil was still standing a few paces away, watching the interaction between Will and Smokey. While the shade of the trees in the area made it difficult to tell, it looked as though Fil’s cheek was a bit moist. “Thank you,” Will said, his voice quiet. “I needed that.”

  Fil nodded. “She did as well.” He turned and walked away, giving man and dog time alone.

  I must be losing my mind. A trained assassin helps me escape death, I’m two centuries into my own future, I’ve been reunited with my dog, and a man who’s acted as if he’d rather have that Assassin here over me brought me my dog back. He chuckled. It was odd how Fil’s act of kindness seemed stranger than teleporting himself dozens of miles away.

  The trio headed his way, each bearing a purposeful look.

  Will glanced down at the dog. He was tempted to sic her on them to avoid whatever new fate they had devised for him, but decided he liked her right where she was.

  “Don’t get up,” Adam said, smiling faintly. He sat on the grass near Will, and the siblings joined him.

  “Have you accepted the part about the time machine just yet?” Angel asked, her eyes worried.

  “Right now, I find it hard to accept anything,” Will replied. “And yet nothing else that seemed impossible so far has turned out to be impossible. I’m willing to entertain the idea that it’s true, with a heavy dose of skepticism.”

  Fil nodded. “A fair approach. We have a proposal for you, however, and for you to accept that proposal you must accept the premise that the machine we’ve mentioned does, in fact, work.”

  Will shrugged. “Continue.”

  “From what we know first hand, combined with what we’ve been able to ascertain from your recounting of your time at Headquarters, it would appear that your wife and son exited the house before The Assassin was able to kill them.” Fil said this without emotion, but Will shook at the word kill. “I did not see them in the house, so clearly their escape was accomplished before my arrival. It’s also likely that it happened before the house caught fire, for The Assassin himself was knocked unconscious from the oxygen loss with the flames. The Assassin has developed the skills of pyrogenesis and pyrokinesis, which means he can translate his Energy — which is not terribly strong, by the way — into fire, and that he can control or move fire. He seems to be immune to fire as well, which means you could throw him into a bonfire and he wouldn’t suffer any burns. Point being, if he’s unconscious from the fire, they would be too, and still in the house. Unless they escaped first.”

  Will nodded. “That makes sense. He told me that he had failed. If they weren’t there, I’m fairly certain he would have considered it a failure of others who had told them where they should be. So he at least saw them.”

  “Right. He sees them, they escape, the fire starts, you’re injured, the Hunters get you. Somewhere in there we show up, get you, Smokey, and The Assassin, and leave. The Hunters leave. No sign of Hope and Josh Stark. But this makes no sense. If you’re dealing with a human woman and a small child, and they are caught in their house by a trained Assassin who has Aliomenti abilities, how could they escape? He had a sword, and he’d already used it to kill two trained security professionals only moments earlier. He’s stronger and faster than they are. They might have been armed, but The Assassin could easily have gotten the gun from them, and in addition, The Assassin did not have any gunshot wounds when we returned. Yet they weren’t there. I ask again: how could this be?” Fil’s right eyebrow appeared at the top of his sunglasses, which seemed to mean that he was arching the brow. Will found this oddly amusing.

  Yet the question itself was not. How indeed? He’d not been at this long, but he knew that no untrained person — or human, as the term was used in present company — could possibly escape him now. He could fly, teleport, or use telekinesis to grab them.

  And then he had the answer. “Somebody helped them. Somebody Aliomenti-trained.”

  Fil nodded. “So the new question is: who did that? And more importantly: why?”

  Will looked back at him. “On that note: why rescue me?”

  Adam spoke up. “You must understand the importance of the Will Stark that the Hunters know and remember. He was the most powerful and influential member of the Aliomenti for many years, and directed many of its innovations and much of its progress. Yet he reached a point of fundamental disagreement over the swearing of the Oaths, and more critically, with the penalties imposed for breaking them. And so he left, letting others know they were welcome to join him as part of an alliance of like-minded Aliomenti who believed it t
heir role to help humanity, rather than thwart its efforts to improve. People left the various Aliomenti communities around the world and rallied to Stark, and started integrating into human society, using their abilities to nudge the most receptive minds in the direction of progress. A few married humans, but none of those had children. With the numbers of Aliomenti dropping and their progress slowing down, the Leader had to make a decision. He found three uniquely-skilled Aliomenti and called them Hunters, sent to hunt down these so-called rogues and bring them back. His scientists were fascinated by Aramis’ Damper ability, and figured out how to repeat it in small rooms, specifically jail cells. The Hunters’ skills improved, and it reached the point that they never failed to get their man, and quickly. But they couldn’t catch Will Stark, no matter how many times they found him. To be blunt, Will Stark is our hero, our George Washington if you will. We didn’t have any reason to believe you weren’t the same man, any more than the Hunters of the time did. And none of us here regrets getting you away from them.

  “Our records show that there is no mention of Will Stark following the fire at your house. You didn’t suddenly appear a few days later. We knew the Aliomenti hadn’t gotten you, because that news would be broadcast. Nobody in the Alliance heard from you either. As we finished the research on the time machine and wondered what our first test would be, we made the rather startling conclusion that you’d disappeared forever during the fire because we’d gone back in time and retrieved you. To us, we were saving our greatest hero from the death the Hunters surely would have visited upon you. We needed to ensure that the fire was seen as having burned everyone in the house, and all evidence of the actions that happened there, from existence. That meant we needed to bring back everyone and everything that would have been found, including the gun.”

  “But what if Hope and Josh had been there?”

  “Then Fil would have gotten them as well, of course. But they weren’t.”

  “Because somebody else had already helped them?”