Preserving Will Read online

  He had no time to dwell on his father’s look. Richard swerved right to avoid hitting the men in the road, a sense of incredulity forming as the car accelerated even as he tried to throw the parking brake on. The car slammed into the guardrail with a sickening thud, the force—with the Energy assistance of the Aliomenti saboteurs—sufficient to snap the seatbelts of the car’s occupants. Richard and Rosemary hurtled forward into the dash, their heads smashed on impact. Their deaths were instantaneous. Will, held in place by the loving Energy cocoon of his future wife, was the only survivor, the only one conscious and able to experience the shock as the guardrail fell away, as the car slowed just enough to teeter on the edge, dangling precariously. Will had just enough time to consider offering a desperate prayer that he could climb out of the car to safety before the car tipped over the edge.

  Will’s scream tore through the microphones, the scream one of terror, the sound of one who watched as a life never truly lived came to a sudden end. She could hear his thought and promise, one made as the car began its descent.

  If I survive this, I will marry for love and make my wife and children happy and proud of me. I will make a fortune so that they never lack for anything. And I’ll help everyone I can so no one ever feels neglected and unloved and unsuccessful like I’ve felt my whole life.

  It was a strange quirk of telepathy that the recipient’s mind translated emotions and pictures into words. Will’s mind had no time to formulate three sentences of distinct thought in the seconds it took the car to hit the concrete road below; he had no time to consider the meaning of the words as the sedan crumpled like an accordion, crushing the bodies of his already-dead parents and smothering his own Energy-protected form with twisted shards of metal. Yet the emotion behind it was genuine. Will had reached a point in his life where what he’d experienced in his life was the direct opposite of what he wanted from his life. It took a near-death experience to free him to articulate those realizations into thoughts, thoughts he’d later write down and carry with him at all times to remind him of the promise he’d made. Had his parents survived, Hope realized, Will’s relationship with them would have changed dramatically.

  It took Will nearly a full minute to realize that he’d somehow survived both the initial crash—surprising—and the forty foot drop—impossible. He looked around, and his acceptance of his parents’ deaths was instantaneous. He didn’t see their crushed bodies, just enough mangled metal and shattered glass to realize that whatever miracle saved him hadn’t been extended to those who’d given him life. Hope remembered that Will once told her that they’d effectively been dead to him for years, had treated him as a worthless waste of space, and that their deaths had, paradoxically, finally freed him of their mental tyranny and allowed him to live.

  She finally understood what he meant. And in truly understanding, she had a deeper insight into the man she now impossibly loved and respected more than she ever had in the preceding thousand years.

  “Hope, is Will okay?”

  She blinked, snapping herself free of the emotion-based connection with Will. “He’s fine, Eva. Did you capture the villains?”

  “We did.” Eva’s voice was confident, inflected with a subtle touch of annoyance, as if the question suggested doubt that her teams would apprehend the perpetrators. “We will be returning to the safe house to incarcerate the criminals and extract what useful information they may possess. When finished, we will ensure that they find themselves waking from their alcohol-induced sleep with no memory of this day… and terrible headaches that we will be certain to exacerbate. We will see you there when your business here ends.”

  Hope smiled. Eva knew she’d want to stay with Will through to the end of the ordeal before leaving him.

  She kept the Energy Shield up, flooding him with feelings of confidence and purpose. Emergency crews arrived, sirens blazing, men and women approaching the scene with horror and a realization that no one inside the crushed green hunk of metal lived, that their purpose was to secure the guardrail and reroute traffic. They saw the first flicker of flames near the crushed car, and moved quickly to douse those flames to prevent an explosion which might injure one of them or destabilize the supports for the overpass. Hope could feel the intense heat of the flames through Will, and could feel the drop in temperature and relief of all those gathered as the flames winked out of existence. Hope shuddered; he’d have another fire to deal with in twenty years, and he wouldn’t escape that one without burns as he had this time.

  She watched as the machine known as the jaws of life pried the mangled wreckage apart, heard the crews shout immediate and resigned recognition of the deaths of the driver and passenger seat occupants, and felt Will’s peaceful acceptance of their official loss. She felt the air flow in as the machine pried the metal away from him, heard the shouts of surprise through his ears, the stunned recognition of the rescue crews when they found Will not only alive, but without significant injury. The metal had bent away from him upon contact with the Energy Shield; it looked to the rescue workers as if a series of freak coincidences had resulted in metal colliding with metal, providing a protective barrier around the teenager in the back seat rather than a tortuous death. They had no explanation for Will’s lack of injuries from the impact of the collision and fall, though, save for a little-believed theory that the metal cocoon had acted as a type of shock absorber.

  One shrugged. “He was wearing his safety belt.”

  “Maybe we can get him to film a public service announcement recommending their usage.”

  They argued about whether the safety belt made a difference in this instance, but in the end there was no other explanation to offer. Miracles and Energy Shields weren’t accepted explanations for survival in reports written by humans.

  “I guess you have someone up there watching out for you, huh, kid?” one of the medics told Will after giving him a clean bill of health.

  Will could do nothing more than nod. But he did glance up, and his line of sight happened to catch the spot where the flying craft hovered. Hope smiled.

  A family friend took Will back to the empty house that night. As the only surviving child of Richard and Rosemary Stark, Will inherited their entire estate. His parents had taken out a second mortgage to finance trips the two of them took over the years. They owed more on the house than it was worth. When Will sat in the church pew a week later, as his parents’ friends mourned a loss he himself did not feel, he did so knowing that the burial costs would exhaust the entirety of his parents’ assets.

  He was orphaned, penniless, and homeless. His country was trying to dig its way out of an economic recession that fought death as vigorously as he had in the car crash. Hope knew from Will’s own memories that things would get far, far worse before they ever got better. And yet she knew that even against such long odds, all alone in the world, Will Stark would succeed. The emergency worker was wrong. Will Stark didn’t have just a single guardian angel watching over him, enabling to survive, to become the man who’d lead the recovery a desperate nation needed.

  No. Will Stark had an entire Alliance behind him.

  VI

  Student

  2011 A.D.

  He’d looked like a man in his early forties for centuries. Today, Adam would take on the appearance and moniker of a nineteen-year-old college freshman.

  The fortyish-looking man entered a stall in the restroom within the university student forum, tuning out the peculiar aromas assaulting his sense of smell. He removed an object from his backpack that looked like a small wad of aluminum foil, attached an end to the inside of the stall door, and pulled. The shiny material turned reflective as he stretched it out, and in a moment, with the edges affixed to the door, he had a private mirror to use to perform his personal cosmetic alterations.

  He’d learned the basics of Energy-based appearance alterations centuries earlier, and Hope, who’d gone through more pseudonyms and appearances than anyone else, had offered him tips to ensure that h
e aged appropriately. If he retained his nineteen-year-old face for decades, people might wonder what was going on. Hope told him that wasn’t the biggest error.

  “Once you’ve aged in public, you can’t rejuvenate your appearance,” she told him. “Your efforts must look natural. People will accept efforts to mask signs of aging—hair coloring, cosmetic surgery even—but they’ll know how you’ve made those types of changes. If you truly look young again, though, if people can’t figure out what you’ve done? You’ll never be able to use your new image in public again, because no lie you provide as an explanation will give people answers they can believe.”

  Those types of errors—a failure to age, the risk of rejuvenation—were a core reason why trips Outside typically lasted less than twenty years. Adam would need to carefully manage his public appearance and his true appearance for the next two decades. With everything he needed to manage and monitor during that time, an appearance slip would be an unfortunate but predictable error.

  Ashley, who’d founded a series of technology companies over the past decade, had developed a day-by-day image aging computer program. Adam located a second small wad of material that looked like plastic wrap, and stretched the material out over the mirror. The plastic wrap was a single purpose computer, designed to display the image of his new face as it should look on that day, naturally aged. By overlaying it on the mirror, he could see his current appearance and the proper image at the same time, and adjust his appearance as needed, matching whatever subtle change might be suggested by the program.

  When Adam removed the image computer overlay moments later and looked at his new reflection in the mirror, the change was striking. Gone was the fortyish-looking man with the brown eyes and thinning brown hair. He now sported thick, dark hair and blue eyes, and his skin had smoothed to match that of a man not yet out of his teens. He nodded at his new reflection. He made faces, pinched his skin, and ran his hands through his hair. He even popped a piece of sour candy into his mouth, forcing himself to watch the expression in the mirror change as his body shook and shuddered with the tart taste. Each action, odd though they might seem, was designed to train his mind to recognize the new appearance as his, not that of a stranger. By the end of the strange series of actions, he had cemented the image of his new face in his mind.

  After rolling the plastic wrap and aluminum foil up and stuffing them into his backpack, he flung the bag over his shoulder, wrinkled his nose one last time at the aromas emanating from the nearby stalls, brushed his new, longer hair off his face, and walked outside. He blinked as bright sunlight assaulted his eyes.

  The college he’d elected to attend specialized in his chosen technology field, and had the added advantage—from Adam’s perspective—of being small. While larger schools, boasting tens of thousands of students and faculty, would make it easier to blend in, it also increased the risk that someone from the Aliomenti was there looking for recruits or defectors. His chosen school was in the northwestern portion of the United States, far away from the Aliomenti Headquarters, and far from those locations where most search efforts commenced. The Aliomenti had lost the strong work ethic his father and Will had described from the early days, when the very first Aliomenti worked with their hands, taking pride in improving their skills. Today, getting their hands dirty, literally or figuratively, would appall their leadership. Traveling beyond the scenic coastal areas of a country—especially when it required lengthy travel from Headquarters—represented a level of effort the Aliomenti would avoid if at all possible.

  Adam smiled inwardly. Their laziness made his job that much easier.

  He glanced at the paper in his hand and read his class schedule. With the year off due to his accident, the school had the opportunity to assess which of its many prerequisite courses he might skip after demonstrating mastery of the subject through a series of examinations. Drawing upon the life experiences earned over his three centuries of life, Adam had breezed through the exams, earning the right bypass the introductory, prerequisite courses and jump directly into the core classes for his degree. Adam signed up for the maximum number of courses the school would allow during his first semester. He had no intention of developing an active social life, and his centuries of healthy living and Energy skills enabled him to work long hours with little sleep. The registrar had noted that the school’s base tuition covered only a finite number of credits, and that Adam would need to pay up front for the extra courses. Adam had paid without hesitation, for the amount was a trifle to him. His checking account, set up under his pseudonym, was well-funded by the standards of any American college student, but it was an amount he’d never miss.

  He found a campus map and used it to locate the building where his first class of the day would occur, studying the sign with deep interest. It was an unnecessary exercise, for Adam had memorized the campus layout, room numbering schemes, and the locations of the offices for each of his classes, professors, and teaching assistants before he’d arrived at the school. He thought it would be something expected of a new student on campus his first day, and thus he’d done it in an effort to seem normal to any who might be watching. He wondered if by trying to act normal he might stand out in a manner he was trying to avoid.

  Adam reached the building five minutes the class started and slipped inside. The air was ripe with the anticipation of a new semester, triggered by dozens of students trying to find their classrooms while simultaneously flirting with each other. Adam wandered into the large first floor lecture hall and found a seat in the middle of the back row next to a gangly man with red hair and freckles.

  “Is this seat taken?” Adam asked.

  The young man looked up, glancing at Adam with cobalt-blue eyes. “Not at the moment.”

  Adam sat down, dropping his backpack on the floor. “I’m Cain,” he said, turning to offer a hand to the young man next to him. As he said the name aloud, his earlier mental training kicked in; he truly believed he was Cain Freeman.

  “David,” the redhead replied, completing the handshake. The freckles and youthful face left Adam wondering if David was even eighteen years old.

  “You a freshman?” Cain asked.

  “Sophomore, actually,” David told him. “Tried to test out but wound up having to take most everything standard last year. What about you, Cain?”

  He recognized the effort to remember a name by repeating it in conversation. “I’m a freshman, David. I was supposed to start last year, but I had a bad accident right before my first semester was supposed to start. Recovery took too long, so I waited to start until this year. I guess it helped to have nothing to do but sleep and study; I took the tests and passed all of them.”

  David let out a low whistle of appreciation. “Well done, Cain. I think you can call yourself a sophomore as well, then.” He grinned, wrinkling the freckles on his face. David pulled a notebook and a pen out of his bag and set them down on his desk. “Have you picked a major yet?”

  Cain nodded. “Information technology. I think data storage and security is going to become critical in the future. You?”

  “Biotechnology. Minor in robotics. Same reasoning, actually.”

  The professor entered the room, and Cain took an instant dislike. The man had no interest in being there, considering teaching underclassman a waste of his valuable time. But the department head required professors to teach classes, and so the man was here, begrudging the students in the room every second of the class. He had a mandate to be here and teach, but that didn’t mean he had to give his students his best effort, and Cain knew the students would likely suffer for the lack of preparation and interest.

  He turned his attention from the disinterested professor to the student sitting next to him. “That’s an interesting combination.”

  David nodded, his face lighting with enthusiasm. “I’ve been reading about subatomic building materials for a few years. I think we can use those structures, and robotics built on a similar scale, to deliver medicines directly t
o cells and increase their effectiveness.”

  Cain nodded, thoughtful, as he considered the idea. “That sounds fascinating, actually.”

  David nodded in agreement. “Robotics with that level of sophistication will require a great deal of computing power, probably more advanced than anything available now. I still need to understand the basics, understand what the trends are, and understand how I might be able to take advantage of everything going forward. And then… I have to figure out how to miniaturize it all to a degree never before attained in human history.” He grinned, scrunching up his freckles. “Nothing like a great challenge to motivate you, is there?”

  Cain inclined his head. “Indeed.” He paused a moment. “If you don’t mind my asking… how old are you, anyway?” He gave a faint smile. “Sorry for asking.”

  David laughed. “Don’t worry about it. I get asked that a lot. I’m nineteen. I just look a lot younger than I am.”

  The professor’s projected voice reverberated through the room, and the feedback from the microphone sounded like a klaxon inside the lecture hall. Cain covered his ears, but David hadn’t even flinched. The redhead noticed Cain’s attention. “I had this guy for a lecture last year. He starts every class doing that, says it’s to wake us up.” He reached up and pulled out earplugs as the feedback stopped. “I’ve learned to come to class prepared.”

  Cain winced. “I’ll keep that in mind.” He paused a moment, as the professor rambled on about the goals of the class. “Any other insights on this guy?”

  “He hates teaching, so ignore the lecture. His class materials and handouts are outstanding, though. He bases part of your grade on attendance, so the best bet is to sit in the lecture hall and study the handout notes and ignore him. He doesn’t ask or answer questions.” He held the earplugs out. “I recommend using these the entire class period.”

  Cain nodded, rubbing his painful ears. “I’ll keep that in mind.”