The Guardian Collection (End of the Sixth Age Book 2)

by Col Bill Best

  A chameleon lizard, brown to match the cardboard color, scurried out of the box and onto the table. Apparently, the stowaway from the warmer central Florida climate didn’t realize it was supposed to be dead.

  45. A TIME TO REMEMBER

  “It’s time.”

  The impression was as clear as if she’d audibly heard the voice. Startled, she rose out of bed and looked at the clock. Two a.m. The voice, or impression, or prompting of the Holy Spirit, didn’t come again. It didn’t have to. Ellen O’Brien had suspected from that first meeting in 2006 that somehow her life would again intersect the lives of Roger and Cindy Brandon. She intentionally stayed away, not wanting to put them in any danger from Jason and his team. He had proved too often that he would do anything, use anyone, to get to her. Over the years, she and Roger and Cindy made sure that even emails were carefully encrypted.

  When she learned of Roger’s accident and his loss of Cindy and the kids, her heart broke for him. While he was still recovering in the rehab center, she sent him a painting she had made for him. It portrayed a muscular Jesus, on top of a heavenly mountain, confidently pulling on a rope that extended down below white clouds and through a terrible thunderstorm. The end of the rope was secured to a mountain climber, struggling to climb up the treacherous earthly mountain.

  Even now, years later, she prayed for Roger daily.

  Ellen was wide awake now. She walked into the bathroom and checked her hair before showering. Good; no roots showing. As she showered, she went through her mental checklist. Her one-year lease had just started, and as always, was paid in full. She never stayed anywhere longer than a year. She would leave with her “short list” of belongings and send the key and a note for everything else to be donated to the local charity she’d already chosen. It was all so routine.

  She dried off from her shower. Before touching anything other than the washcloth—which she used to turn the faucets on and off and to handle her shampoo and soap containers—she put on her gloves. The 3-D printed graphene gloves with her “Ellen O’Brien” set of fingerprints and fingernails fit seamlessly over her hands and closely manicured nails. This was one of the several technologies she didn’t patent and didn’t share with anyone. The gloves stayed on twenty-four/seven, except when she carefully showered. The unique, durable, breathable material with integral fingernails would fool even an expert. They would, and had, even held up under a police fingerprinting scanner one time.

  Now, the most important thing. She kept it in the washing machine, of all places, suspecting that would be one of the last places an intruder would look. She opened the lockbox and spread out her credentials.

  Ellen O’Brien. Red hair, green eyes, glasses, thirty-two. The next passport was for a Kim Brandon. Okay, she did kind of like that last name. Black hair, dark brown eyes, thirty-two. There were other sets of passports, Social Security cards, and driver’s licenses. Various colored contact lenses, fingerprint gloves, and more. Various sets of glasses meticulously designed to foil facial recognition cameras, even the newest multi-spectral systems used in airports.

  Ellen didn’t like to deceive. It was against her nature. But she also didn’t like being a lab rat… and worse. Desperate men would do desperate things to acquire what she had. Already, many had lost their lives. Very painfully.

  So, Ellen had learned how to work the system. Or systems. All of them. Her high IQ, memory, attention to detail, decades of study, and years of practice had made her an expert on many things—including the various dental devices she had designed. They could give the appearance of higher cheekbones, a narrower or broader chin, or puffier cheeks. She was familiar with all current facial recognition cameras and had access to the world’s best facial recognition software. She regularly made sure that each of her aliases could not trace her back to any of the others.

  The lady knew all the tricks. After Matthews’ team found her again four years after the death of her husband, she had to.

  Ellen opened an envelope in the lockbox to look at the original. Strawberry blonde, five feet six inches, weight 150, hazel eyes. A full-length picture would have shown her as a beautiful thirty-two-year-old woman, who could easily be an athlete or physical trainer. Jennifer Karen Lane Richardson. Actual age? Fifty-six. Ellen sighed and put everything back in the box and then placed it in her backpack.

  She took a last quick peek at herself in the mirror to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.

  A sudden realization hit her so hard she almost collapsed. She grabbed the countertop to steady her shaking knees. For the first time in years, in spite of her incredible health, she felt faint.

  “My God!” she exclaimed, in reverence and awe.

  Like the scales that fell from the eyes of Saul of Tarsus, who later became the great Apostle Paul, Karen’s mind was suddenly opened. And she remembered. She sat down hard on the sofa as she did the math. Thirty-five years had passed.

  Karen fell off the couch and onto her knees.

  “My God!” she exclaimed again.

  She had a decision to make. How different might her life have been? How much heartache could she have avoided? Would she have ever come to Christ any other way? Would her life have ever had the influence and purpose she’d experienced all these years? She never would have met her late husband and would have missed those short but precious years together. Yet…to have had a normal life?

  She fast-forwarded through the difficult decades of her adult life, since being turned inside-out and upside-down by what had happened early one morning those thirty-five years ago. And she knew what she had to do. What she would do. What she had already done.

  Years of intense Bible memorization and study flashed through her mind. Her study of Scripture was just one of her many academic pursuits. But it was the most special, intense, and precious. It was out of love and relationship, not out of simple interest or curiosity. It was to build a strong foundation for her life, as Roger had admonished that fateful Sunday morning so many years ago.

  She knew there was no Biblical precedent or even a general principle for what was about to take place. But she firmly believed that all things are possible with the Great I Am, the true and living God of eternity. And she also knew that what had already happened to her through FSAT was without precedent.

  Does even this capability date all the way back to Genesis? An ability God created in us, that we lost during the Fall?

  Kneeling against her couch cushion as a makeshift altar, she quietly began to pray. “Father, you know the end from the beginning. You are the self-existing God, who created time. I humbly ask you to do what I believe you have already done. Because I believe that your will is perfect. And that you have a plan and are still carrying it out. Father, I wait on you.”

  In her imagination, her mind’s eye—like a waking dream, although much clearer than that—Karen thought of a particular phone number. Strange that she remembered it after all these years. She saw and heard herself calling it, and it was answered on the third ring.

  She said to a young woman, “We need to talk. You have a book due in a week. You have no idea where to start or what to write. I have a story to tell you that I promise will change your life. I know your favorite coffee and the pastry you only allow yourself to enjoy once a month. I’ll bring them to your apartment in half an hour.” And she did.

  As the strange—what was it, a dream, a vision? As whatever it was continued, she met with the twenty-two-year-old college graduate, and they talked for hours. The young woman was skeptical—of course—but couldn’t seem to drag herself away, as if the story itself compelled her to listen to the end. Karen reflected with shame on how self-centered and shallow the young woman seemed.

  Then it was over.

  “Father, then and now, Thy will be done.”

  She glanced at the clock. Only minutes had passed. Ellen—Karen—rose from her knees and looked again in the mirror at the red hair, the comfortable but attractive pantsuit, and the matching flats and handba
g.

  She remembered everything from that strange event those thirty-four years ago. She was staring at the very same thirty-two-year-old-looking woman who brought her a tall cup of her favorite coffee and that to-die-for-pastry, in what was somehow more than a dream one early morning. It was a dream that changed her life forever, yet until now it was a dream which had been forgotten almost exactly seven days later. Apparently, the memory of that encounter was the one thing she lost when she slammed her head against a pipe and suffered a mild concussion while fleeing for her life. But she had remembered long enough during those few days to write her story as a fiction novel. She had raced to deliver it on time, got off the elevator on the wrong floor, and witnessed an execution over the formula for Five Score and Ten—FSAT. A formula funded by Jason Matthews. An execution ordered by Jason Matthews. All of that led to her meeting Mick, Samantha, and Dr. Andy Richardson, who helped lead her to Christ, and later led her to the altar.

  So much had happened in those fateful few weeks so many years ago. She came to realize how shallow and worthless her life was. Then she began to fear for her life. That condition remained to the current day, although tempered and focused into actionable precautions. Finally, she saw her new friends in imminent danger of torture and death. And by the grace of God, she did the three things she never imagined doing. First, she became a Christian. Second, she took the last existing dose of FSAT, expecting it to slowly and painfully kill her. And third, with the superhuman physical strength it gave her, she overpowered the guards and freed her friends. But the altercation left her mortally wounded, assured that either the bullet or FSAT would quickly end her young life.

  Yet she lived.

  The lovely woman smiled at herself in the mirror and raised her eyebrows.

  “Jennifer Karen Lane, have you ever got a wild ride ahead of you, young lady!”

  She glanced at the weight set over in the corner and smiled. She always wondered about the reaction of the charity workers coming to receive her donation. A bed, miscellaneous furnishings, appliances, some linen…oh, and over a thousand pounds of free weights and an extremely heavy-duty weight bench! She couldn’t afford the attention she would receive going to a local gym and out-lifting even Olympic weightlifters, so she did her serious exercising at home.

  “Yes, young lady, a wild ride indeed.”

  46. A TIME TO FORGET?

  Ellen placed her limited possessions in her car, an old 2015 Ford Taurus, and drove down the street to gas up. That done, but before she got back in the car, she heard a collision. Even as the wreck continued, she immediately discerned what happened…and it was bad. A city van had swerved to avoid a car that ran a red light at an intersection fifty yards from Ellen. The van glanced off a parked car, hit a curb at an angle, partially rolled on its side, and hit a light pole. A pedestrian was trapped under the van. She knew this particular van ran on liquid petroleum gas—LPG—and the tank was right where the van was leaning against the light pole.

  Her evaluation: If the LPG tank ruptured, the heavier-than-air gas could suffocate the pedestrian, at the very least. Worse, it would ignite from any suitable source of heat, like a lit cigarette. Rare, yes. But after years of decline and problems with vaping, pipes had started becoming popular again.

  Ellen sprinted toward the scene and was there as the driver pulled himself out of the van. She avoided high heels, choosing rather to wear shoes and clothing that, while attractive, allowed her to move quickly. Over the decades, she had needed that ability all too often.

  Her fears were confirmed. She heard the hissing and smelled the odor of leaking LPG. The tank, placed up high for safety in the event of more likely collisions, had been ruptured by the unusual tip-over against the light pole.

  Under the van, the pedestrian, a middle-aged man of about five feet ten inches and around 190 pounds, was clearly in pain. His left leg was trapped between the van’s rear tire and the curb, but he was not in immediate danger from that. The real danger to him and the gathering crowd was the leaking LPG that could suffocate or explode.

  Ellen made direct eye contact with a thirtyish man with close-cropped hair who appeared to be a body builder. He was moving forward through the crowd with a clear intent to help.

  Ellen carefully modulated her voice to be directive but not to offend the man’s ego and create a battle of wills. It was a psychological balancing act she had honed but only used in emergencies such as this. She directed him to grab the man’s shoulders and prepare to pull.

  The man dropped to his knees, grabbed the man’s shoulders, and braced himself. What happened next caught everyone by surprise. Without asking for any assistance, Ellen placed her back to the van. She squatted down, grabbed the underside of the van just in front of the rear tire, lifted it a full foot off the ground, and yelled “Pull! Now!”

  The body builder pulled the pedestrian free and Ellen dropped the van. Then she did use her “fully directive” voice: “Everyone back! This gas is going to explode!” And in the confusion, she quickly returned to her vehicle and left.

  She knew her current identity was blown. Multiphone pictures and videos would be posted all over social media within minutes. More pictures and video would be extracted from traffic cameras and plastered over the news networks within the hour. Commentators would call in experts to evaluate the superhuman strength of a young woman deadlifting at least 1,000 pounds to a height of a foot for five seconds. Pictures and videos from documentaries that had been produced about “her” or “them” over the years would be brought up, new documentaries produced, web sites updated; the list went on and on.

  But the real concern was that Matthew’s team would instantly know it was her and would be there within hours. Legitimate police would be on the lookout even sooner.

  Ellen knew all that before she took her first step to help. But she understood that her special abilities were God-given, and she was committed to use them when necessary to honor God and to help others. That’s why she had so many aliases and was so adept at changing from one to the other.

  Ellen drove around for fifteen minutes to make sure she wasn’t being followed, then parked at the opposite end of her apartment complex. She grabbed her backpack, and quickly walked back toward her apartment and to the motorcycle she had not yet disposed of.

  Once again, Jason Matthew’s team would be checking airports, bus stations, train stations, car rental agencies, and traffic cameras. She was sure someone would have captured her car’s license tag. So, she again did the unexpected.

  She took her riding gear out of the sidebags and went back into her apartment. Five minutes later, a young woman with different glasses, different colored contacts, different denture appliances, darker red hair, and different fingerprints exited the apartment. If anyone happened to see her enter and exit the apartment, they wouldn’t know the difference; she left wearing leather from neck-to-boots, with a full-face helmet and a dark visor.

  The morning in Asheville, North Carolina was cold, but there was no snow or ice in town or on surrounding mountain roads, so she took the scenic route and leisurely rode through the Great Smoky Mountains, thus avoiding cameras along interstates. By evening she was in Helen, Georgia.

  + + +

  Three days later, Stacey looked up from her receptionist’s desk at DPI. The young-thirties redhead standing before her in a classy red blouse, black business suit, black pumps, and modest jewelry would turn heads in any venue, but she was clearly overdressed for DPI.

  There was something else about her. On the one hand, Karen seemed to have the confidence and self-assurance of a much older woman. On the other hand, she seemed, well, lost.

  She had introduced herself as Karen Lane Richardson, an acquaintance of Roger Brandon’s since before he lost his family.

  “Ms. Richardson, I’m so sorry you hadn’t heard. Roger was killed back in November during a flight test of one of our systems. I’m not even allowed to give you any details, other than that he put himself in jeopa
rdy to save others. There are a lot of folks here who loved him very much, and there are many who owe him their lives.”

  Karen just stood there, bewildered.

  Stacey’s legendary perception was at maximum. “You know, Justin Townsend was one of Roger’s closest friends and took over Roger’s responsibilities after the accident. Let me see if he has a moment…”

  A few minutes later, she ushered Karen into Justin’s office.

  “Please sit down, Ms. Richardson. Is it Karen Richardson? Your name sounds familiar.”

  Karen just stood there, staring over his shoulder. Justin followed her gaze to the picture on his wall. The one that had hung in Roger’s office.

  “Karen Richardson…”

  Justin sat down, hard.

  Karen lowered her head. “I…I guess…so it’s true then? Roger’s gone…” she said dejectedly and plopped down into a chair.

  After a few moments, Justin regained his composure. “Karen, you’re a Christian, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. And Christ used Roger at a very critical point in my life. A crisis.”

  “And He used you at a very critical point in my life. That picture you painted for Roger? I looked at it daily as we’d talk in his office. After the…accident…I couldn’t get it out of my head. This painting. The Scriptures. I asked Jesus to forgive me and be my Savior and Lord. Thank you.”

  Karen looked at him long and hard. Justin became uncomfortable under the gaze. Finally, she took a long deep breath and reached into her purse.

  “Justin, I’m going to show you something you won’t believe. But it’s true. I showed this to Roger and Cindy back in 2006. God brought me here for a reason, so it must be to let you know this. I don’t understand why. I thought I was to come here to meet up with Roger, and God was somehow going to use us in some special way to serve Him. Now I understand he’s dead. You will be one of very few people who know about me. All but two are mortal enemies. I am not exaggerating to say that this can put my life in extreme danger, so I trust you to keep my secret.”