Birth of the Alliance Page 18

  Nice try, Will. Porthos’ sneer came through his telepathic message. We’ll deal with you later. We’re tracking one of your people, one who’s been giving off some serious Energy. We’re going to have a… friendly chat with that person. The threatening laughter came through, piercing Will like a dagger.

  Will roared. They were going after Hope. And they meant to hurt her.

  He raced outside. The bombs were falling in rapid fashion now, and smoke from the burning ships watered his eyes, assaulting his nose with the smell of melting metal. The screams of terror and physical agony rose all around him, drowned out by the ground-shaking explosions as bombs found their targets. He sprinted for the dry dock, where the Pennsylvania rested, seeing even from a distance that the ship was in flames. He knew, without checking, that Hope was fine, but he had no read on whether his great-grandfather had survived. Perhaps his own continued existence proved that Hope had succeeded in her efforts to get the man to safety. He remembered that his general nanos each possessed a camera and microphone. He slowed just enough to view the images they transmitted to his mind, and the nanos interfacing with his brain assembled the transmissions to a single image like a television screen. The young man Hope had protected was swimming in the water of the Harbor, comfortably away from where the bombs continued to fall. Will ordered the nanos surrounding his great-grandfather to keep the man afloat; even if the man lost consciousness, he wouldn’t drown.

  Now he needed to find Hope.

  He took a step closer to the burning battleship and then froze.

  The Hunters emerged from the Pennsylvania and headed for the dock, holding between them a slender figure wearing a hooded cloak. Hope's dark hair, part of the visage she wore in public, poked outside the hood. Aramis led the way down the plank to the dock, apparently convinced that the woman they’d captured was no threat to escape. If anyone had bothered paying attention as death rained down around them, they’d suspect that the Hunters had rescued a woman from the burning ship, covering her with a blanket to protect her from further harm from flying embers.

  Will reached the dock just as the Hunters stepped on to the sturdy structure. The sailors parted before the Hunters, permitting the men and their captive to pass while failing to notice their very presence.

  Porthos noticed Will and stopped moving as a sneer formed on his face. “Will! So nice to see you! Is this a friend of yours?” He shook Hope roughly as a look of recognition crossed his face. “Hey! I recognize her now. This is that human woman, the swordfighter, who had to protect you all those years ago, isn’t it? She seems to have developed into quite an Energy user since then.”

  “Careful, Porthos,” Will snarled. “She might stab you while you’re running your mouth.”

  “I rather doubt it,” Porthos replied. “But I must confess that I’m still a bit… offended at the outcome of that little fight all those years ago. You see, she had more weapons than I did…”

  “There were two of you and one of her,” Will snapped out, continuing to advance on the group.

  “…and that just doesn’t seem like a fair fight,” Porthos finished, ignoring Will. “Since she had one sword more than I, and one sword more than Athos, we'll reverse the odds this time.” Aramis stepped forward and seized her, and Will watched Hope experience the agony of the Damper, feeling the lifetime worth of Energy she’d generated crushed out of her. She sagged to the ground.

  “Such a shame to waste so great a talent,” Athos said. “But her Energy skills condemn her as a recipient of Energy skill and knowledge through unlawful means. She learned it from you, didn’t she? She didn’t go to The Leader for that all-important information.”

  “You do know the human penalty for being found in violation of an Oath, don’t you?” Aramis face was smug. Unconcerned about demonstrating his Energy abilities among the humans—who between the bombs, explosions, fires, smoke, and screams had enough to occupy their attention—he elevated Hope to a standing position, never breaking his contact with her. Porthos and Athos drew short swords from sheaths on their belts, the same swords they’d use to attack Will nine decades hence, and moved toward Hope, who looked to be nearly unconscious.

  “No!” Will screamed. All caution was lost. He hurled his remaining nanos at Aramis, knocking the man aside, freeing Hope from the ravages of the Damper. Hope fell to the dock with a thud. She tried to move, tried to find the Energy to teleport, but her Energy stores needed more time to regenerate, and she struggled in her efforts to protect herself. Will teleported the last ten yards to her side and threw up a shield of nanos and Energy, diving atop her weakened form just as the two Hunters plunged their weapons toward her prone body.

  Will started to turn, started to look up. He expected to see looks of surprise on the faces of the Hunters, stunned at their failed efforts to stab Hope. Instead, he felt something warm fall on him, something sticky. The warm substance dripped onto his cheek, and rolled down his face toward his nose and mouth. He smelled and tasted the iron and salt as he realized the nature of the substance dripping on him. Will twisted up and away from Hope and looked in the direction of the Hunters.

  Their swords had penetrated Adam’s torso clear through. His blood dripped on the dock, and Will instinctively rolled Hope away from the blades, not trusting that Adam would continue standing upright and preventing the sharp points from continuing their killing arcs toward her.

  The Hunters ripped their swords away. Adam fell heavily to the dock.

  “You?” Athos shouted, his tone a mixture of anger and disbelief. Adam managed to crawl to his knees. "You’re the traitor? The Leader knew someone in his upper echelon was leaking secrets to Stark, but… you? You’d sacrifice your own life to aid this mere woman?”

  “I… just… did, didn’t I?” Adam whispered. His teeth gritted together as he spoke, his voice full of obvious agony.

  “Why?” Athos snarled. “Why did you betray us?” He whirled his bloodied sword around for another blow, and his fellow Hunters turned toward Hope and Will once more, similarly readying their weapons.

  “Enough!” Will screamed. Subtlety no longer mattered; the Hunters had found them, the humans were too occupied with the falling bombs and sinking ships to notice anything he might do. He wrapped the Hunters in his Energy and teleported them all ninety miles away, dropping them in the middle of the ocean far from land. He knew they’d survive, though he didn’t much care about that detail at the moment.

  He faced Hope, who was struggling to her feet. “I'm fine,” she snapped, standing and shaking herself. Her tone was strong once more. “We need to help Adam.”

  Adam’s face was pale from the shock and blood loss. He looked at Hope, gazing deeply into her eyes, pausing for a moment before he spoke with some difficulty. “That man… that human man… he needs your help. Go… go to him.”

  “But…”

  “Go!” Adam's voice held the forcefulness of desperation.

  Hope’s eyes filled with tears. She bent down, kissed Adam on the top of his head, and teleported away.

  “We need to get you back to headquarters,” Will said. “My tools… they're gone right now, but if we can—”

  “No, Will,” Adam whispered. “It’s too late for me, and I doubt even your little healing machines would help.” At Will’s look of surprise, he gave a weak smile. “Yes, I know about them. But they aren’t… important now. Now… you need to listen.”

  “But—”

  “No,” Adam said, louder this time. “I have little time left, and you must hear what I will tell you before… I… can no longer talk.”

  Will opened his mouth to protest once more, but only nodded.

  “First, you must take these.” Adam reached inside his shirt and pulled out a chain worn around his neck, a chain Will had never before noticed. At the end of the chain were small tubes, formed of a material Will couldn’t identify. Adam struggled and pulled the chain off his neck and handed it to Will. “Do not lose these. Ever. Guard them… with…
your very life if… it comes to that. If you… if you lose them, your life won’t… be worth living… anyway.”

  Will could only nod, baffled as to the meaning of the words. He put the chain around his neck and tucked the chain and the tubes inside his own shirt.

  “Second, you must find… Eva… and tell her… what has happened… to me.”

  Will blinked. “But… I haven’t seen Eva in centuries.”

  Adam took several steadying breaths, clearly struggling to keep his eyes open. “She lives. Find her. It’s… the most… important thing… you can do. Even… more important… than your… research.”

  Will nodded, his mind numb with the messages and Adam’s continued fade into the abyss. “I'll find her.”

  “And… Will… you must promise me… promise me…”

  “What?” Will asked. “What do you want me to promise?”

  Adam’s eyes closed, and he took several rasping breaths, his skin pale and clammy to the touch.

  “Adam?”

  Adam’s eyes shot open, and he seized Will's shirt. “Promise me… that… you’ll… you’ll protect… him.”

  Will blinked. “Who, Adam? Who do you want me to protect?”

  Adam’s breathing was even more labored now. He looked as though he was trying to mouth the words, but was struggling to gather sufficient air and strength to utter even a single name.

  Will leaned his ear down near Adam’s face. “Who, Adam? Who do you want me to protect?”

  Adam inhaled the last breath of air his lungs would ever breathe, and as his last gasp exited him, he projected his final words to Will.

  “My son.”

  XV

  Mourning

  1941 A.D.

  Hope returned fifteen minutes later. A faint smile covered her face, signifying that she’d been successful in completing her mission. Will's great grandfather would live to continue the line leading to Will.

  But the smile was short-lived. Her face fell as she saw Will kneeling next to Adam’s lifeless body. Will finally reached up to close Adam’s eyes. He felt as if he was closing the door on his future. Adam was the key, the lynchpin to the entire complex plan to make sure that he and Hope could be together those few short years, could bring their children into the world, could ensure that Will escaped the clutches of the Hunters to return to the distant past and continue the cycle of living just as before.

  And now Adam was gone.

  They’d failed.

  Adam wouldn’t be there with his children in the time machine, wouldn’t teach him the basics of Energy usage, wouldn’t be the voice of calm reason against Fil’s feigned anger at Will’s very existence. He simply wouldn’t be. The cycle of time had changed, and the future he knew from memory was now uncertain.

  Hope put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s… sort of a war zone here, Will. We need to get him—and ourselves—out of here.”

  Will looked up, his human senses only just registering the chaos around him. It was the brief calm before the second storm. Battleships were ablaze and sinking in the distance, making the damage to the nearby Pennsylvania seem all the more minor, though in some ways she’d claimed her sixteenth fatality after all. Though the sounds of the Japanese fighter planes had faded, Will knew another attack wave was only moments away, preparing to finish anything the first wave failed to accomplish. He didn’t trust himself to speak, but he did manage a brief nod. He glanced around, though he knew none of the pilots or sailors would notice them, and touched Adam’s body before teleporting both of them back to the submarine. Hope appeared beside him an instant later.

  “How can he be gone?” Will screamed to no one in particular. He didn’t expect an answer, yet the silence that greeted his question was like the piercing swords that had ended the life of the man lying dead on the floor before him.

  Hope finally broke the silence. “I don’t know, Will. I do know this, though. We have almost ninety years to get a plan in place for the Hunters and Assassin. Someone else will help us. The Cavern is full of people who will—”

  “No,” Will said, his voice laced with more anger than intended, and he shook his head. “Adam is dead because he tried to help us. How many others will die? We need to handle this alone.”

  “We can't, Will.” Her tone was simple, sad, one that begged him to keep fighting. “You’ve said it yourself. History says you may not be around after 1995. I may not be around after the children reach adulthood. We need to entrust others with the truth about your past and our future, and the need to complete and carry out the plan Adam was creating. We still have to figure out the cure. We have to make sure that history—”

  “But history—future history—has changed.” Will’s voice was quiet, and he spoke through clenched teeth. “Whatever history told us no longer matters. Adam was the one to do all of that. He was there in the distant future and he was there to rescue me in 2030. He can't be there now. He's dead, Hope.”

  “That doesn’t mean we don’t bother to try to adapt, Will.” Her eyes were blazing, challenging him, daring him to quit, to use this setback as the excuse to walk away from nine centuries of trials and tribulations.

  Will stood up. He began to pace around the cabin, hoping the movement would present the answers to his dilemma. After a few moments, he stopped and looked at Hope.

  “I don’t know how this can be fixed,” he said, his voice soft but fraught with emotion. “But I can promise you this: I won’t quit until I’m as dead as Adam.”

  Hope slapped him gently on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit! But no morbid talk, mister. We’re both going to live a very long time—”

  “Um…” Will’s eyes twinkled. “I turned 958 earlier this year. What, exactly, would you classify as living a long time?”

  She snorted. “We’re both going to live even longer than we already have. Better?”

  “Very specific answer there.”

  She smacked his arm again. “And not only that, we’re going to find the cure, our children will be born, and everything will work out just fine. We simply need to find someone else we can trust, someone powerful enough to handle anything that might happen, and bring them aboard. They’ll be our new Adam.”

  Will, who had started to pace again during Hope’s speech—while playfully rubbing his arm in mock pain—suddenly stopped. “Eva.”

  “What?” Hope was startled. “What makes you bring her name up? Have you… seen her?”

  Will shook his head. “No. Not recently… not in the past nine hundred years or so. You’ve seen her more recently than I. No, I mentioned her name because of something Adam said, just before… well, before he… you know.” His face registered the raw pain and emotion once more, but he continued on. “He said that I needed to find Eva and that she was still alive. I guess he found her, which is strange, because after his attack on the original North Village I got the impression she was avoiding him.”

  Hope frowned. “I did as well; she made it clear that it was best for both of us if we stayed away from him. But obviously I’ve not talked to her since I went off on my own, even though I’ve looked for her. I don’t know where she’s been hiding, but it’s a great hiding spot.”

  “Adam seemed to have made the decision to stay away as well,” Will said, remembering their conversations. “He badgered me for months, demanding to know where you and Eva were, and then one day, very suddenly, he seemed to realize something… and he stopped asking. It was as if some major understanding came over him and whatever that understanding was, it caused him to stop asking where the two of you were.”

  Hope frowned. “That makes no sense. I guess the only thing we can say is that, whatever their respective reasons for staying away from each other, at some point they made contact, and neither of us was aware of it. So the question is why would Adam tell us to find her?”

  “Well, at a minimum, she’d want to know that he’s… no longer with us.” Will looked at the ground so Hope couldn’t see the tear dripping down his f
ace, though he knew full well she knew that tear had fallen.

  “That's true,” she said, frowning. “I suppose we should honor his last wishes, locate Eva, and let her know the news.”

  “We need to return him to the Cavern first,” Will said. “It’s the appropriate place for him to be… laid to rest.” Will looked at the ground again, trying to avoid looking at the lifeless body nearby. “He lived with the Aliomenti, but his heart and home both resided with the Alliance. That’s what he’d want.”

  Hope nodded her agreement. In reality, they had no other option for burial, save for a burial at sea. Neither of them would consider that option with any degree of seriousness. Will ordered the Nautilus to carry them to the Cavern. They spent the next two days generating sufficient ice to preserve the body as best they could inside a large wooden box Will had aboard from his last transport trip from Eden. This time, they would not come bearing treasure in that box, but tragedy.

  They arrived at the entry tunnel to the Cavern several days later, parking the Nautilus at an empty berth of the underwater dock encircling the tunnel opening. After teleporting Adam aboard one of the shuttle pods, they spent the short ride to the Cavern in silence, reminiscing about fond memories of Adam, each wondering what they might have done differently to prevent the tragedy.

  The pod came to rest near the beach, and the two of them teleported to the designated entry point for the pod, bringing with them the simple pine box holding Adam’s body. Passers-by waved cheerful greetings at the two of them, but paused at the looks of sadness and shock on the faces of Will and the Shadow.

  It was only after seeing those looks that they realized what—and more importantly, who—was in the box beside them.

  Death was an uncommon sight in this community. A small percentage opted out of the ambrosia, preferring to live mortal lives, but with the quality of nutrition and advances in medical science the Alliance had made, all still lived ninety years or more before succumbing. The immortals traveling outside would on rare occasions be caught by the Hunters and die in the ensuring battle. In those instances, the bodies would never be retrieved, for the Hunters would take the victims back to Aliomenti Headquarters as a warning to anyone thinking of defection.