Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm Read online

  Stark Cataclysm

  The Aliomenti Saga — Book Six

  by Alex Albrinck

  Copyright (c) 2014 by Alex Albrinck. All rights reserved.

  Cover design: Karri Klawiter (http://artbykarri.com)

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  The Aliomenti Saga

  A Question of Will (2012)*

  Preserving Hope (2012)*

  Ascent of the Aliomenti (2013)*

  Birth of the Alliance (2013)

  Preserving Will (2013)

  Stark Cataclysm (2014)

  “Book 7” (TBD)

  *Part of The Aliomenti Saga Box Set (2013)

  Contents

  Title

  Prologue

  I Taken

  II Sand

  III Invention

  IV Escape

  V Formula

  VI Fifteen

  VII Reconciled

  VIII Spy

  IX Abaddon

  X Selfless

  XI Resolve

  XII Rebuilding

  XIII Transporter

  XIV Immersion

  XV Retrieval

  XVI Testing

  XVII Walkthrough

  XVIII Return

  XIX Detour

  XX Angel

  XXI Adam

  XXII Mechanic

  XXIII Fil

  XXIV Freedom

  XXV Preparation

  Prologue

  Fil Trask sat in his office, staring at a series of numbers until his eyes glazed over.

  The phone rang.

  He glanced at the caller identification and frowned before activating the phone. “Hi, Judith. It’s been a while.”

  “They’re gone, Fil.” Her voice quavered.

  He felt his insides go numb as he stared at the phone.

  The Alliance had provided round-the-clock volunteer observation of his wife and daughter for five years. The surveillance wasn’t intrusive; Alliance members stayed in nearby houses, dined at nearby restaurant tables, walked on nearby streets.

  Judith and Peter had monitoring duty that day. They’d likely gone to get lunch, stepping away as so many had during the long days of dullness.

  When they’d returned to check on the house, they’d found nothing.

  “Did they go out?” He tried to keep his voice steady, tried to find a logical explanation that had a positive ending.

  “There was a note, Fil.”

  His phone buzzed. He glanced down, pulled up the image she’d sent. A handwritten note.

  Lost something? We’ll be in touch.

  Fil hung up the phone. His breathing had gone shallow, his eyes wide, his pulse racing.

  They’d taken his family.

  There was a knock at the door. He was on his feet in an instant. “Come in.”

  The receptionist walked in, holding a package. “This was just delivered for you, sir. The note said it should be delivered immediately.” She paused, frowning. “Are you okay?”

  Fil nodded once. “Thank you.” He couldn’t keep the strain from his voice.

  She sat the package on his desk, eyeing him with a look of concern. She opened her mouth as if to question him again, then decided against it. She left, closing the door behind her.

  Fil pounced on the package, tearing the box apart. The tablet computer inside had a note as well. Say please.

  Fil opened and closed his mouth twice before he could croak out the word. “Please.”

  The screen activated, and Fil found himself staring into the eyes of death.

  “Hello, Mr. Trask.” The crazed eyes were streaked red. “I seem to have found something of yours.”

  He stepped aside, and Fil’s heart threatened to explode from his chest.

  His wife and daughter were strapped down on side-by-side gurneys, their mouths stuffed with rags. But their eyes, wide with terror, told him everything he needed to know.

  The sound of the dual blades leaving the scabbard sent him over the edge.

  I

  Taken

  2040 A.D.

  He dreamed of fire. He always dreamed of fire.

  The heat from the flames touched his skin, burning his flesh. He didn’t cry out. He wouldn’t let his mother know he felt pain. Her fear overwhelmed him, more than enough for both of them. He would be strong. For her. For both of them.

  The fire was not kind. It burrowed into his skin, finding a home inside his body. He closed his eyes, blocking out the flames, hoping fire out of sight would no longer burn him.

  It didn’t work. It never worked.

  The fire’s intensity increased. His internal organs must be melting, cooking like meat upon an open flame. The inside of his skin throbbed. It would melt off his muscles and bones. Why would the fire never leave him?

  He could no longer tolerate the heat. He opened his mouth to scream.

  Fil Trask sat up in his bed, the lightweight sheet wet with the sweat generated by his dream. He gulped, sucking in lungsful of the frigid air in his bedroom, trying to cool himself from the inside out. But the heat would never go out.

  His breathing gradually stabilized, his skin cooling until merely warm. His Shield, cracked open during the intense dream, was in disrepair; he’d leaked Energy during the final moments before awakening. The artificial scutarium shield trapped the excess Energy inside, though, and no one outside the house would notice the burst. The Shield, a mental construct trapping Energy inside the body to prevent tracking by the Aliomenti, was another curse burdening Fil. His mother’s Shield rendered him mute as a child. His own Shield now trapped his enormous Energy stores in his like insulation containing the heat from a fire. His tolerance grew as he aged, but over time the buildup pushed him past his limits, and on many night he’d wake up before he burned himself.

  Nobody knew if it could be fatal. Nobody in history was like Fil. There were no answers for the problems plaguing him.

  He glanced at his alarm clock. Five o’clock in the morning. Two hours before he’d wanted to get up. He shook his head, annoyed. This Energy curse had woken him early and would keep him from falling back to sleep. Perhaps he should just let it all go at once, take his chances on what might happen. The warnings from his past, from others, always stopped him from giving in to that temptation. A giggle when he’d been six had triggered a sufficient Energy release to level a century-old tree… and his Energy then had been tinged with happy thoughts. An Energy now, fueled with his anger at this curse, could destroy… well, nobody seemed to know. As usual. They’d measured his Energy until the instruments had exploded, and concluded that he could probably destroy a territory the size of several states. It was thus imperative that he maintain his Shield—and his emotions—at all times.

  Maintain his Shield and suffer a slow, painful death, burning from the inside out. Let the Shield drop and be responsible for the deaths of innocent millions.

  No pressure.

  With a sigh, he realized he needed to go through an Energy discharge. He didn’t enjoy the process, didn’t like the fact that life had cursed him with the necessity. As a seventeen-year-old, it wasn’t a responsibility he felt prepared to assume. But he saw the price others had paid. His efforts were mere annoyance by comparison.

  Maybe he could at least postpone it until after school.

  He found a pair of moderately clean jeans in his closet and pulled them on. He ruffled through a drawer, located a plain black t-shirt, and pulled it on over his lean, muscled frame. The physique was another gift of his unique heritage, one he liked far more than the burden of burgeoning Energy.

  Fil opened the door to his bedroom and thumped down the stairs. He heard each stair tread s
queak with the exception of the third from the top. The house shifted slightly as houses do, and some hidden beam shifted with a mild grunt. He flipped on the lights for the small kitchen, blinking to allow his eyes to adjust. Adam must have cleaned last night after Fil had gone to bed, for the smell of disinfectant wrinkled his nose.

  The dream of the fire triggered a longing for the massive kitchen in their old home, the one they’d lived in when they’d been the Starks, before Angel had joined them, when the younger version of his father still walked the planet. That kitchen was gone, burned to ash by the Aliomenti Hunters and the Assassin. A strange sense of peace filled him at the memory. The house had been his first home, a place he’d enjoyed, a life he’d enjoyed, one he wished to recover every day. But that life was gone, sentenced to die before he’d been conceived, a curse he knew he would ensure at some point in the future.

  Fil slammed his fist on the counter. The surface cracked, the sound echoing through the otherwise silent house. The crack was certainly noticeable, not something he could leave alone and expect it to remain unnoticed.

  Oops.

  He listened carefully for the sounds of stirring, but the other occupants of the house remained fast asleep.

  He looked at the crack once more and felt his Energy surge, taking on a life of its own, ready to act. He put his hands over the countertop, willing the Energy to re-bind the molecules of the surface into a solid, smooth, level surface. He watched as the counter straightened, as the crack vanished, and he nodded in triumph.

  Cheater.

  He jumped as the transmitted thought entered his mind from one he’d thought asleep, and he felt a burst of Energy behind him.

  Fil rolled his eyes. “Stop doing that. You know I hate when you do that.”

  Angel laughed. “You taught me. Remember?”

  The gloom left his face. He could never remain angry when she laughed, and she knew it. He could resist her Energy, the only one in the world immune to her innate empathic Energy skill. But his little sister’s laughter held a magic unique in all the world. “Yeah, I remember. I told you how to teleport and you wound up two miles away inside our unit at the storage facility.”

  Her violet eyes twinkled. “There’s lots of cool stuff there. Besides, moving three feet is boring.”

  He snorted. “Nothing is boring if you’re involved.”

  She curtsied, all freckles and sweet innocence. “Why, thank you, big brother!”

  He folded his arms. “Speaking of not-boring… when were you planning to tell me about that punk who’s been bothering you?”

  She giggled. “He’s cute!”

  “No boy that age is cute. Should I scare him a bit?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Why? I can handle anything.”

  “Of that, I have little doubt. I’d prefer you not have to find out for certain.”

  “I’ll let you know if he becomes a problem beyond my meager abilities. You can then swoop in and scare a little kid like a superhero.”

  Fil chuckled. “You are entirely too smart for your own good. You know that, right?”

  “You said I’m smart. What do you think the answer is?”

  Fil opened the refrigerator door and dipped down, looking for something appealing to appease his rumbling stomach. The cold blast of air felt delightful. “If you want to know, little sister, you can read my mind.”

  “Now that’s something I truly fear.”

  Fil lifted out a plate of leftovers from the previous night’s dinner, closed the refrigerator door, and put the plate into the microwave oven. As the dish heated, he turned to look at his sister. Her violet eyes were marked with concern. “What’s wrong?”

  “You… you need to discharge, don’t you?” Her voice quavered slightly.

  Fil sighed and turned to retrieve the dish from the microwave as the timer sounded. “Is it that obvious?”

  Before she could answer, Adam entered the kitchen, yawning. “Your concern about blowing up the house and the surrounding three states was rather strong. Woke me up, in fact.”

  Angel nodded, her platinum blond curls bobbing.

  “Sorry,” Fil said. After fishing a fork from the utensil drawer, he sat down at the table and began shoveling food into his mouth. Any excuse not to talk about his least favorite topic.

  Adam smiled. Though four centuries in age, he looked to be in his early seventies. That appearance was of his choosing; his natural look would make much of the world see him as a man in his early forties. “Don’t apologize. Discharge.”

  Fil swallowed his food. “I hate discharges.” He shoved another bite into his mouth, chewing with great fervor.

  “So you’ve mentioned for the past decade. It’s part of your responsibility, though.”

  Fil swallowed again. “Yeah, yeah, don’t want to attract the scary Hunters, men I could blow up without breaking a sweat.” He rolled his eyes. “I wish we could just wipe them out. I could do it, you know.” Visions of the Aliomenti Headquarters in rubble filled his head.

  “No, Fil,” Adam said. His tone was that of a stern grandparent. Adam wasn’t really his grandfather, of course; he merely played that role. He did it well, too well most of the time. “Much as I hate to say, they need to live, because—”

  “We know, we know,” Angel chimed in. “Daddy’s memories say all three Hunters are alive when he travels to the future.”

  Fil turned away, though he knew the anger generated by her words was impossible to hide from his empathic sister and “grandfather.” They lived their lives in bondage to those memories, a devotion to a future that permitted a man to leave his wife and children rather than fight those who would seek them out and attempt to destroy them. It would be no more than an attempt. He could take them all out now. He knew it. But his mother had forbidden him from taking such action.

  “Fil.” Adam’s voice was patient as always. “You’ll feel better if you do a discharge.”

  Fil stood pushed his plate aside. “I’m not hungry.”

  He stood and stomped out of the room, listening to his heavy footfalls and the rattling of the walls and furnishings.

  He froze as a weak voice reached his sensitive ears. “Fil?”

  He teleported to his mother’s door and hesitated outside her room. “Mom? Should I—?”

  “Yes, come in.” Her voice sounded weaker than usual. That couldn’t be a good sign. He took a deep breath, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.

  He’d seen pictures of his mother from her wedding day. She’d radiated happiness and beauty; he could see the Energy sparkle in her blue eyes in those photos. He thought of the pictures he’d seen from the time of his birth, when she’d still shown a spark… just a bit more subdued, something he noticed now only in hindsight. His favorite picture, of her holding the newborn Angel, gave even more evidence of her decline. Even as a seven year old, he knew something was wrong. And he’d heard the adults—Adam, Eva, and Aaron—talking about his mother’s graying hair falling from her head soon after Angel’s birth.

  He forced himself to look in her direction and smiled.

  “I know I look awful, Fil.” Her voice was soft, delicate, belying the lifetimes his mother had lived, the power she’d wielded in both physical and Energy terms, the emotional strength displayed as she’d lived the last few decades without any obvious support from her soul mate. The wrinkles were severe, the eyes dull and sightless, her hair long gone. Her remaining, waning Energy was spent in a daily battle for survival. The ravages of a millennium of living had savaged her life force over the past eighteen years, accelerating as each defense fell.

  She looked every bit of her thousand years. And each day made it clear that, unless they found a means of reversal, she’d not be with them much longer. He was amazed at the tenacity she’d displayed in lasting this long, while they fumbled about with various theories and attempts for cures.

  “You look beautiful, Mom. You always do.”

  “Liar.” There was no malice in her quie
t voice.

  He winced slightly. “I can honestly say you don’t look a day over five hundred.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment.” She closed her eyes, exhausted by the brief exchange, before opening her eyes to continue. “You need to discharge.”

  The words hit him like a dagger. All her pain, all her suffering, and he’d made her worry about him again. “I know, Mom. I was planning to get a session in before school.”

  The pause told him she knew that was a lie… or that speaking took too much strength. “Good boy.” Another pause. “Fil… I don’t know how much longer—”

  “Don’t say that!” His tone was savage, his fear at her message overwhelming. “We’ll find something, Mom. We should announce a vacation, go to the Cavern, and—”

  “I won’t do that to those people, Fil.” She coughed, a hacking sound that sent shivers down his spine. He was grateful that Angel wasn’t seeing or hearing this. “Seeing me will make them fear for their own lives. Mine was a unique set of circumstances that will never occur again. When the time comes, I want you and Angel and Adam to tell everyone that I’ve gone on a mission with Will.”

  He turned his head so she couldn’t see his face.

  He’d be an orphan in any true sense of the word. His mother… gone. His father… in deep hiding. He’d be asked to pretend they were dead, to care for his ten-year-old sister.

  It wasn’t fair. It was too much to ask of him. Alliance members told him his father was a hero, willing to sacrifice his own happiness to keep his family safe. Safe meant nothing to Fil. Safe meant separation from the father who existed only as a memory. Safe meant a painful final existence for a woman robbed of her eternal youth.

  He wanted them together, not “safe.” Together, as a family, they could make any situation permanently “safe.”

  That approach never received serious consideration. Plans and discussions focused on hiding Will’s continued existence from the Hunters. As a result, a man six centuries younger than his mother acted as her father-in-law, they lived under false names and appearances, and he could do nothing Energy-related outside scutarium-lined safe zones.