Aliomenti Saga 6: Stark Cataclysm (18 page)

“Aramis, let go. We need to leave.” Porthos had appeared beside them, his trademark hooded cloak swirling as he worked to pry Aramis from Gena. “There’s a massive tsunami headed toward this island. Someone let loose an explosion of Energy that dwarfs what Stark did forty years ago. The water’s propelled by it. This building is going to be destroyed, and if you stick around, you’ll be buried under twenty feet of sea water.” His fingers scraped at Gena’s neck, drawing blood, as he worked to pry Aramis’ fingers with renewed vigor. “She’s
drained
, you fool. Leave her. Let the ocean claim her for her crimes. We need to get to the ship.”

She could feel the hesitation in Aramis’ grip, but at last he let go, and a fractional second later they were gone.

The relief was short-lived.

She could feel the wave in the floor beneath her feet, feel the vibrations around her as the wall of water smothered the island in a crushing embrace, splintering buildings, ripping trees from the ground, burying the land under water and silt. Her Energy finally reached a sufficient amount to allow teleportation, she moved to the surface outside Headquarters.

She would make it. She would summon the craft, climb aboard, and make it back to the Cavern. She’d help Angel master time travel, comfort Fil in his time of need, and look to deepen her relationship with Adam.

Her hand slapped at an empty pocket.

She looked to the east and saw the wall of water hurtling toward her.

She tried to teleport into the craft, hoping that the GPS chip inside her had directed the ship in her direction. But she didn’t move. She didn’t have enough Energy. And she realized that she’d never swallowed the chip, not after arriving and learning that Marjorie would undergo the exit interview.

She was trapped.

She refused to cry, to curse her fate. She’d fight to the very end, try to stay alive until her Energy regrew, or… something. None of the Alliance was nearby; they’d all gone, shuttling the humans into the boats, prepared by group effort to aid the natural buoyancy of the ships to withstand the initial onslaught of water.

They’d never hear her faint cry for help.

She moved west, jogging as fast as her fatigued body would allow. Her shoe slapped concrete, then concrete, and then she heard it splash. The wave knocked her forward and swept her up, burying her in seawater. She found enough Energy to propel herself to the new surface and expel the water she’d swallowed, and she treaded water, keeping her mouth and nostrils in contact with the precious air her lungs screamed to breathe.

She watched, in a bemused manner that belied her precarious condition, as the golden letter A formerly adorning the Headquarters building floated by. The scent of salt was powerful, wrinkling her nose, making her want to sneeze, an act she fought. A sneeze would duck her head beneath the water, and she might not come back up. Her arms began to lose feeling, her legs began to lose the ability to kick and keep her head above water, and a burst of self-pity ripped through her.

Her concentration lapsed. Her head slipped beneath the water, and she swallowed deeply.

She tried to draw in air, to cough, to expel the water from her lungs, but she couldn’t summon the strength to propel herself back above the surface. Her arms moved slower, her legs stopped moving at all.

She knew it was the end.

As she let go, as she opened her mouth to let the water claim her as quickly as possible, she dug deep, found the last slivers of Energy, and fired out a telepathic message of love to those she’d leave behind.

And then everything went dark.

XI

Resolve

2070 A.D.

He could remember nothing but the void, a place without sight or sound or smells. The void was all around him. He fell for what seemed an eternity, couldn’t remember reaching the bottom. At some point, the sensation of falling ceased. He remembered nothing until consciousness returned in this place. Whatever this place was.

He could feel soothing Energy around him. The sound signal seemed familiar, but he couldn’t think of the owner. He was laying down on a comfortable mattress, and cool, clean air brushed against his skin.

He could feel all of his limbs. Nothing seemed broken or damaged. He couldn’t remember being attacked or hit or shot. Why did he full a dull ache all over?

The images sprang into his mind. Images of Sarah and Anna, bound and gagged, Anna’s bindings destroying her Energy. The maniacal assassin Abaddon with the red-streaked eyes.

The knives slicked with blood after the assassin had plunged them into the hearts of those he loved most.

He sat up and screamed.

Strong hands seized him and fought to break free. The hands were firm, but didn’t look to injure him. He felt the Energy around him change, felt a soothing calm in its embrace. He let his screams fade. He opened his right eye in a tight squint before shutting it again, then gradually opened the eye as his pupils adjusted to the bright lighting in the room. With the right eye opened, he repeated the process with his left. He blinked a few times, letting his dried eyes coat with tears, and then looked around.

He was in a sterile white room, resting upon a narrow elevated bed. He turned to his left. Adam sat in a chair, unmoving, staring at the unconscious form of… someone. He couldn’t see the face, but the emotion of despair emanating from his former “grandfather” was strong.

“It’s been a brutal twenty-four hours, Fil,” a familiar voice said quietly. “We all need a chance to recover.”

Fil said nothing for a moment. He turned and looked into the tired, sad blue eyes of the Mechanic, who sat in a chair similar to that used by Adam. “Sarah, Anna… they’re…” He couldn’t finish the sentence. Couldn’t say the word.

“We’ve lost many people over the past day,” the man replied with some delicacy.

The feeling of failure returned. It was his penance, remembering his failure, the look in their eyes as their captor succeeded while their supposed protector failed. Death would have been merciful. He’d wanted to die.

Why was he here?

Intuitively, he knew he hadn’t saved himself. Someone had helped. He didn’t know who. Or why.

His eyes detected the movement to the side. Angel. Her face was lined with worry and grief, the usual youthful exuberance erased from her face. Her eyes lit up briefly at the sight of Fil sitting up. She moved to him, threw her arms around him, buried her face into his shoulder, and sobbed.

“What happened?” His voice was raspy. How long had he slept?

The Mechanic and Angel looked at each other, sharing a silent message he didn’t bother to intercept. His sister looked at him. “You were falling. We got to you before the water took you forever.”

Water? He could remember falling, remembered the never-ending void, but water? “You should have left me to the water. I don’t deserve to live. I… failed them.”

“Stop. Now.” Her voice cracked. He expected her to switch to telepathy, but Angel had decided this message was one he needed to hear with his ears. “Mourning is essential. Self-flagellation will help no one. And there are so many who need our help.” She paused. “Who need
your
help.”

Help? Who would need help, especially from him? “I don’t… understand.”

Her pained look morphed to one of pity. “You don’t remember what happened at all, do you?” She shook her head. “Tell me the last bit you remember.”

He thought, searching through memories he wished someone would erase. “I was at the office. I got a call from Judith. They couldn’t find Sarah or Anna. I got a delivery from… the new Assassin. He used the tablet to talk to me. I
saw
them, Angel. They were trapped somewhere. Anna had some kind of dampering vest on. They were tied down on beds. I couldn’t sense them, couldn’t find their location. He offered to tell me, but… but instead… he…” He swallowed hard. “He gave me the location. I didn’t get there in time to save them.” He sniffled his nose, wiped away the tears.

Angel swallowed. “I know what you saw. Do remember what happened before he showed you… where they were?”

He thought. “I teleported. A lot. And then—”

“You teleported from the southeastern part of Minnesota to a place hundreds of miles away. And then you repeated the process. A dozen, maybe two dozen times.” It wasn’t a question; her tone suggested she was trying to draw an answer out of him, something he didn’t want to know.

He searched his memory. Flashing images of cities. The frequent displacement of teleportation to reach each location. Abaddon’s taunts. His empty search each time for a whisper of Anna’s Energy. He looked at her and nodded.

“You remember nothing after your… final discovery?”

“No.”

The look of pity returned.

She moved away, pacing around the room. He wasn’t the empath she was, but he’d lived long enough to recognize that she needed to tell him something. But she had no desire to do so. An awful thought occurred. “Wait… what did I… did
I
do something, Angel?”

She paced a moment longer before stopping, taking a deep breath, and then moved over to stand next to him. “Do you know what the longest recorded teleportation was, prior to what you did?”

What you did?
The words were ominous. “Something similar?”

She sighed. “Eva once teleported Judith to the South Beach port. She was perhaps four hundred or five hundred miles away at the time. You teleported roughly that distance on a short hop yesterday. Sometimes multiples of that hop.”

Fil swallowed. “I did?” But when he thought about it, it made sense. His mind assembled jumbled memories together, and found truth in her words. “I did.”

She nodded, seeing the recognition in his face. “Your mental state when you use Energy… taints it. Anything you emit has that emotion embedded. Eva’s emotion was altruistic, a great desire to help. The Energy she gave off from her starting point? It knocked a few people down, but otherwise did no harm. When Dad… called the Hunters to Pleasanton, he gave off a lot of Energy as well. But he wasn’t angry. He only wanted them to come to Pleasanton and do what needed done. That’s why the house and the city didn’t so much as shake, even though his Energy reached all the way to Headquarters Island.”

Fil thought about her words. An awful thought began gnawing its way into his consciousness. He’d been angry. Full of rage. And the amount of Energy he’d expended for each hop had been enormous.

More images flashed into his mind. Public video screens in each city when he arrived. Images of widespread devastation in cities across the globe. Buildings leveled, major metropolitan areas reduced to little more than rubble for miles in every direction. As he’d moved through his progression, the words “nuclear weapon” had appeared on the ticker.

And Abaddon. Abaddon, a man who like his predecessor hated humans, had told him where to find Sarah and Anna as a “gift” for helping the Assassin achieve a major goal.

The awful truth hit him.

That damage on the view screens hadn’t come from natural disasters. It hadn’t come from a barrage of nuclear weapons set off by militant terrorists in sequence around the globe.

It had been him.

The last memory before losing consciousness was of pushing all of his remaining Energy out of his body while aboard the ship, of falling into a void. It wasn’t a void. The ship was gone, the deep ocean waters beneath him displaced.

“The water… it reached shore…”

“It went through several islands in the Atlantic and… and… there was some flooding.”

Flooding? A wave that went
through
several islands would cause more than flooding. It would eliminate property and life at a catastrophic level.

He’d unleashed Armageddon, or something nearly as bad.

It meant that in losing his wife and daughter, he’d taken far more lives in his grief and anger, unintentional though it might have been. He looked at her and swallowed. “There were… casualties.”

She nodded. “We lost many. The Aliomenti lost far more. Human populations were… hurt very badly.”

“Who?” He reach out and gripped her arm. “Who did I k—who did we lose?”

“Cities you teleported from were… hurt badly.”

He clenched, pulled with such force he thought his skin would burst. Judith and Peter had been there in Minnesota when he’d departed. They wouldn’t be coming back to the Cavern. Anyone who’d been Outside in or near a major city was gone. The Aliomenti, far more concentrated in major cities than the Alliance, would be harder hit. But neither group would suffer as the human population had suffered.

“The waters wiped out Headquarters Island.”

Fil’s eyes snapped back to the Mechanic.

“All of the Aliomenti escaped without harm.”

The words not spoken were the key. “What about the… others?”

The Mechanic nodded. “It was an act of heroic bravery that saved so many. A spy had arrived yesterday morning, seeking information about the impending attack on you we’ve long suspected. She became aware of the wave well before it hit. She pushed the humans to the boats on the far side of the island, broke into Headquarters, and freed all of our prisoners, re-Energizing them enough to teleport to the boats and give them enough of a lift to rise above the initial blast of the tsunami.” His eyes fell. “The Hunters found her before they left. Aramis drained her of Energy.”