Adam's Journey (The Aliomenti Saga - Book 8) Read online

  Genevieve’s face wrinkled.

  “As you might imagine, life was difficult for him as he grew up.” Adam remembered all the stories in an instant, the words and tones and emotion as his father recounted one of the most bitter periods of his long life. “Rather than being a leader among his peers, he was the lowest of the low, the nameless child no one wanted. His half-brothers teased him, sucker punched him, refused to punish any who might give him grief. He became… easily triggered to violence.”

  “Is that why they threw him out? Right before… he met us?”

  “Somewhat.” Adam watched as the crew carrying his father mounted the hill, led by the man who’d stolen the sword. “He made a big mistake. He was overheard telling his mother that he would one day be the Adam, even if that meant killing his brothers.”

  They watched as, at the command of the man at the sword, his father’s unconscious form was hurled down the rocky incline of the largest cave, drawing the attention of all who occupied the sandy beach that day.

  ~~~38~~~

  1017 AD.

  They watched as his father’s body landed in a heap at the feet of an older man with a thick gray beard and silvery hair.

  “That’s the Adam, my grandfather,” Adam told her. He motioned to the top of the hill. “The one who led the group here is called Cain, the older brother.” Though it wasn’t always the case, the Adam’s sons usually were named after the Biblical sons of Adam. When he’d created his Cain Freeman identity, he’d chosen the name to remind those helping prepare for Will’s departure to the future that it was him—Cain, the son of Adam.

  There was another reason he’d picked the name, though, after hearing the stories he’d seen unfold in person.

  This Cain looked to be in his mid-forties, relatively fit and healthy for the age. He clambered down the hill ahead of the others. The spectators watched as he pointed at the unconscious man at the Adam’s feet, gesturing wildly. The Adam’s upper lip curled, and he used his foot to roll the unconscious man over, staring at the face of the son he’d not seen in two decades. The old man’s eyes widened, and though they could hear nothing, his facial expression revealed that he recognized the face of his unnamed child even after so many years apart.

  A second man approached, one bearing a striking resemblance to Cain. “That’s the other brother, isn’t it?” Genevieve asked.

  Adam nodded. “Yes. He’s the younger one, called Abel. And he’s far crueler than Cain.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. It’s his way of reacting to the life fate has dealt him, the equivalent of my father telling his mother that he would kill his brothers if need be to become the Adam.” He leaned back against the seat. “Abel’s life has been relatively easy, but he has a thirst for power. And his older brother is strong, healthy, and shows no signs that he’s near death. And his brother already has two sons. Abel is now the fourth in their line of succession. He can be the Adam only if his father, older brother, and nephews die. If that were to happen in a short period of time, he’ll reasonably be viewed with deep suspicion. In many ways, he’s of no greater status than his unnamed half-brother. He’s had that taste of potential power, though—he’s basically a prince on this island—and he likes it. He just knows he’ll never be the Adam, the king… and he takes his frustrations out on those who can’t fight back.”

  They watched as Abel moved forward and asked a question. The Adam responded and nodded at the newcomer who stirred at his feet. Abel’s eyes widened. He strode forward… and kicked his half-brother in the ribs, shouting at him.

  Genevieve gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. She turned to him and winced. “I… see what you mean.”

  Cain and the Adam both restrained Abel, whose eyes were wild, angry, desirous of the opportunity to inflict even greater pain upon the prodigal son. While Cain continued his restraining efforts, the Adam raised his voice, and all upon the island answered, returning from the forests, emerging from the caves, standing upon the beach near the stone statues of their deceased guardians.

  Once all gathered, the Adam spoke, gesturing toward the nameless child, stabbing his finger at the unconscious man. Genevieve fidgeted. “I wish we could hear what he’s saying.”

  Adam shook his head. “We really don’t. My father told me what was said. Without going into details about the language, he’s saying that the Nameless One’s return means that they’ve been unfaithful to their traditions. The Nameless One is the embodiment of their evil. They must purify and purge themselves by driving the evil out of the Nameless One, and thereby forever rid the island of evil’s presence. If they fail to do so, they will all surely die.”

  Genevieve shuddered before frowning. “But his existence… that’s solely the fault of the Adam, isn’t it? Nobody else there went to the island and… returned with an extra child. Wouldn’t everyone else already be vindicated?”

  Adam shrugged. “You’re thinking logically. History is filled with cases where leaders claim they alone are responsible for anything positive, and bear little more than tangential responsibility for anything wrong.” He looked at her pointedly. “Think of the circumstances of your death.”

  She did. And she nodded, shivering. “I only told her to keep the secret from Arthur… and he claimed I’d told her to keep the secret from everyone.”

  Adam fixed a steady gaze on her. “That’s the reason he publicly shared for your murder. But he didn’t enter the cottage when he heard you say that. He entered to prevent you from telling Elizabeth something about him.”

  Her face wrinkled. “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “He heard your command in regards to unlocking magic from outside the cottage and did nothing but scowl. Yet you started telling Elizabeth she was old enough to know the truth of something else, something about Arthur, and he was inside the building in an instant, ranting and raging.” He shook his head. “He realized you were going to tell her a truth about him.”

  “But that wasn’t me, that was my… copy.” She opened her mouth twice more to speak as her eyes darted back and forth, remembering the scene, remembering the words her clone spoke. Her lips pursed together before she nodded. “I don’t understand why he’d be so worried about that truth.”

  “He was the only man in the village with a child, and that, unconsciously or not, gave him some level of prestige. As a man desirous of power, Arthur would suffer the early grief for the long-term advantages. But if the truth comes out, if everyone learned that Elizabeth wasn’t his daughter? It would chip away at his power. He’d go from your unquestioned leader to a man who’d perpetuate a lie to maintain his power.” He glanced at her. “Nobody would trust a word he said, ever again. His days of control would be over.”

  They watched below as the Adam spoke, motioning, and the island residents formed a human ring on the beach. Abel—who’d kept his now conscious, still unnamed half-brother pinned to the ground with a boot on the younger man’s chest—reached down and lifted the injured man to his feet, then shoved him inside the circle. The banished man fell and stumbled twice before rising in the center, offering a defiant stare back at his father.

  “You don’t need to watch,” Adam whispered. He didn’t know if the words were for Genevieve… or for him.

  “If we don’t need to watch… why are we here?” She kept her eyes on the activity below, though her emotions betrayed the fact that she’d figured out the likely happenings. “Why not skip this time… and go back to your future? Back to Elizabeth’s future?”

  A fair question. “It’s not necessary to see what happens here, but a part of me needs to know that the stories my father told me in later years are true, not exaggerations to expand his youthful mystique for his son. My part in this? It is yet to come. But it’s no exaggeration to say that if we go back to my time right now and don’t complete the tasks I’ve got to do, Elizabeth’s father will die.”

  He left out any mention of what his father would do in the immediate aftermath of thos
e lifesaving efforts.

  Genevieve might determine that his father’s loss of life would be well deserved.

  And he wasn’t sure he’d disagree.

  ~~~39~~~

  ~~~39~~~

  1017 A.D.

  Genevieve only watched for a few minutes. After three men punched and kicked the man she called Adam mercilessly until he fell to the ground, she knew there’d be nothing fair about what she’d see. And as much as she hated so much of what she’d learned about her former love, she had no interest in watching him beaten to death.

  She’d already seen that happen when the villagers turned on her clone.

  Adam let his eyes glaze over; one could only watch one’s father cough up blood to the delight of laughing, jeering crowds for so long. His Energy raged inside him, demanding release, demanding to work for justice, to reduce the evildoers to grains of carbon sand upon the beach. He pushed that desire down. He’d interfered only by shipping his healing nanos into his father at the start of the fight, staving off the internal damage that would leave his father beyond saving.

  He called to Genevieve when the Adam moved into the ring and called a halt to the beatings, and even from the modest distance, he could sense the disappointment in the crowd. They’d wanted to fully purge the evil before them, continue the beatings until the man breathed his last, until his poisoned soul left his body and their island for all eternity. Genevieve crawled over the divider into the front seat, inhaling sharply at the sight of the battered man on the sandy beach a hundred feet below them. Her anger burned away the tears.

  The Adam dispatched two men to fetch the boat at the other end of the island. They rowed it upriver until the water’s depth no longer allowed it, then ported it over the land. As they neared the caves and the beach, others came to their aid, hauling the boat down from the peak of the rocky hills. At the Adam’s bidding, they moved the boat into the shallow waters of the ocean before them. Cain and Abel hauled the beaten man into the air, settled him upon their shoulders, and waded out to the small boat. They dumped him inside. Their victim was too far gone to even wince or cry out.

  At the Adam’s urging, Cain and Abel seized the oars and brought them ashore. But not before Abel rammed the end into the victim’s head, getting in one final shot.

  “What are they doing?” Genevieve whispered.

  Adam watched as the residents used other boats to push his father’s boat away from shore. “They’re moving him past the tides that would push him back to the island, letting the sea take him wherever it will.”

  “But why would they take the oars?”

  He simply glanced at her, sadness etched into every line on his face. “He doesn’t need oars. They mean for him to die alone in his boat in the middle of the sea.”

  It took time, but eventually the small boat left the tidal gravity pulling it back toward the island. It drifted lazily along atop the undulating waves of the sea, pushed wherever lunar gravity and wind determined. But the boat continually moved away from the shore, and the island residents finally returned to their homeland.

  With the island residents now out of sight, Adam sent his nanos down and lifted the boat into the sky. He made no effort to hide his father; if any saw the boat ascending to the heavens they might spend their remaining years feeling the sting of doubt and guilt about their actions.

  As the boat drew level with the time machine, well above the cloud level, Adam opened the time machine lid and floated his father inside the cabin, setting him gently on the back seat, leaving the nanos beneath him as a barrier. Even now, even after he’d become so immersed in the past, he kept his mind focused on the return, and while all would believe any blood and gore in the back seat to be Will’s, he had no interest in taking a chance that Angel had cleaned the back seat well enough to wonder where the new mess had come from.

  He formed two tubes with a smooth metallic texture, and used them to scrape most of the liquid of the blood still oozing from his father’s injuries. Genevieve watched, baffled. He saw her confusion as he capped the blood-filled tubes, one etched with the letter S and one with the letter E.

  “This”—he held up the tube with the letter S—“will be of immense interest to me many years into the future. And this?” He held up the tube with the letter E. “This will be of immense interest to your daughter. It’s not an exaggeration to say that without this, I would not be here today.”

  He could do little about her confusion at this point. His father’s blood had no strains of ambrosia, and he and his sister would need a parent’s “clean blood” to counter the effects of ambrosia. All memories from those involved suggested that he’d be given the tube labeled “S” for Son, and Elizabeth would be given the tube labeled “E” for Elizabeth. Without those tubes, he’d never exist, Hope wouldn’t become pregnant with her two children, and there would be no time machine allowing Will Stark to make his journey back in time.

  “You’re not trying to deceive me,” Genevieve said, her voice slow and measured. “But you aren’t certain how to explain why you just did… whatever you did? Is that right?”

  He nodded, setting the tubes carefully inside his bag in the front seat of the time machine. He pulled out dozens of packs of pre-moistened wipes, each filled with cleansing, healing liquids, and tore the first open. He handed the damp cloth to Genevieve. “Help me clean him?”

  They climbed to the back seat and positioned the unconscious man between them, carefully wiping away the blood and gore. The healing fluids inside aided in the man’s recovery, etching together open wounds, soothing the inflammation and bruising, easing the pain. His healing nanos worked inside, sealing punctures in internal organs, stitching together broken bones, repairing ruptured blood vessels.

  They stopped an hour later. They’d stripped off his clothing, leaving only a strategically positioned loin cloth. His father looked as if he was merely sleeping after a physically strenuous day, rather than one recovering after a near-fatal beating at the hands of those he’d once thought of as family.

  He clambered back into the front seat, settled his hands upon the machine’s navigation controls, and dipped the invisible ship back below the clouds, buzzing by the island at a high rate of speed, fast enough to generate a rush of wind and a sonic boom.

  That ought to rattle the locals a bit. He smiled.

  Adam slowed down once they were past the island, eventually nestling them down inside a clump of trees near the mainland shore. He let the boat drop into the water near the trees and used his nanos to tie the rope tether to one of the branches hanging out over the water.

  Then he floated the ship back into the sky, hundreds of feet into the air.

  He turned to Genevieve. “My father only remembers waking up on the mainland shore. He believes that fate guided the tides and waves to push him back to where he started, that he’d slept for days atop the sea waves as his body healed from the beating.” He paused, as Genevieve’s eyes took this information in. “As he woke, he met a man resembling the stranger who’d diverted him south along a road where he’d meet three people in a driving rainstorm, also just after he’d been sent away from his homeland in a most humiliating manner.”

  She nodded. “You again?”

  He returned the nod, then fixed her with a stare. “He does not remember seeing his true love, however.”

  Her face registered confusion initially, then fell. “Oh.”

  “It is best if you remain in the ship and watch from afar so that you can avoid any temptation you might feel to reveal yourself to him.” He watched her, felt her emotions and thoughts weighing what to do, what to say. She wanted to be there when he woke, to hear his voice once more, to reach out and touch him just one more time. But the eyes of her lover’s son told her the painful truth. She couldn’t be there. But he’d let her watch from a distance, where there would be no chance of verbal or physical contact.

  She nodded, eyes heavy. “I… understand.”

  He sensed her plans bef
ore she’d finished formulating them, shaking his head. “No, Genevieve, you cannot jump out of the ship after I leave. We’re too high up. If you hit the water from that height, you will die instantly.”

  He sensed her surprise that he’d seen her plans so clearly, that she realized he wasn’t joking about the jump killing her. He watched her carefully as he reached into his supply bag, pulling out two burlap pouches and two bottles of water. He formed a small travel bag around them and attached the bag to his back.

  She watched him carefully, noting the odd assortment of materials in the supply bag, and her eyes flicked to the dashboard console. Her thoughts told him that she’d begun to recognize that this ship had a great deal of power, and it might be possible for her to operate it… if she had sufficient time alone.

  He slapped a layer of nanos across the dashboard console and used another set to lock the supply bag shut after he’d zipped it closed.

  Then he picked up his father, surrounded the two of them with all of his remaining nanos, and after opening the top, floated invisibly out into the sky.

  As he dropped below the surface of the ship, he murmured: “I’ll be back.”

  If all went according to plan, he’d be able to show her the movie one day.

  ~~~40~~~

  1017 A.D.

  He drifted down toward the boat, keeping his eyes alert to any humans in the area. Once convinced he wasn’t observed, he landed in the tree grove near the boat and dissolved the exoskeleton, reforming it into the same cloak and boots look he’d displayed during the encounter two decades earlier, adding a walking stick to the ensemble this time. As with the first encounter, his artificial clothes were too clean. He rolled around on the spongy, mossy turf near the sea, noting the sharp scents of the plants and grasses and salty water. He finally stood and stretched. At this point, any who would see him would believe him to be a traveler who’d slept here for the evening, succumbing to fatigue before finding more suitable lodging for the evening.