Paladin Prophecy 2: Alliance (23 page)

“They made it seem like so much fun, you see,” said Nepsted. “The Knights were paragons to us, the envy of the school. The parties they gave. The theatricals they put on. The spirit they embodied—sophisticated, gifted, worldly beyond their years. Everyone wanted to be a Knight, but we knew they only took twelve men a year.”

“They weren’t a secret society yet,” said Ajay.

“Not when I arrived in ’34,” said Nepsted. “That came later. Everybody knew who the members were then, past and present—the club existed openly. But we didn’t know the criteria for membership, or how they made their selections. You just presented yourself in the best possible light and hoped to make an impression. Then one day, late in our junior year, they let us know.”

“How?”

“A mask. I found it on my pillow that night. A horse’s head. All twelve of us found masks we were required to wear the next night, at our first dinner, when they gave us our names. I was Ganelon the Crafter. From that moment, we had to refer to each other, in private, by our secret names.”

Will thought back to the twelve ancient masks and the list of names they’d found in a trunk hidden in the auxiliary locker room last fall.

“We know about those, too,” said Will.

“But I don’t know if you can appreciate what this meant to us. To be welcomed into the fold of a group like this. The intoxicating sense of privilege it gave us when we learned the history behind the Knights, and our true reasons for being.”

“What were they?” asked Will.

“That for a thousand years the Knights had been the secret guardians of everything good and true produced by Western civilization—education, science, medicine, charity, the arts, spiritual enlightenment. They had us believe that the Knights were dedicated to the preservation of those disciplines and its highest ideals, throughout the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Reformation, the Renaissance, all to way to the founding of America and into the Modern Age.”

Will and Ajay exchanged a look. Ajay’s eyes opened wide, and Will knew they were thinking the same thing.
This is much older and bigger than we even imagined.

“My parents owned a hardware store in Columbus, Ohio,” said Nepsted. “I was a smart boy, nobody special, but a scholarship student who’d gotten into the Center on merit not family connections. But the Knights quickly made us believe that we were joining a high moral order that operated at global levels of influence and had served mankind for centuries.”

“So you were brainwashed,” said Will.

“A real sell job,” said Nick, almost muttering.

But Nepsted heard him. “You’d do well to remember, my young friend, how much trouble there was in the world then. The depths of the Depression, a second world war on the horizon that everyone saw as inevitable. A few months later, when they asked us to contribute by making a sacrifice of our own, it seemed the most natural thing in the world.”

“Who asked you?” asked Will.

“Our faculty advisor, Dr. Abelson.”

Will remembered the name from the monument. “A teacher?”

Nepsted looked surprised again. “Yes. He was the adult in charge of the Order.”

“But you called him the Old Gentleman,” said Ajay, glancing at Will.

“That’s what the Knights have always called the man who holds that office,” said Nepsted. “Abelson taught science and philosophy and was chairman of both those departments. A traditional role for the Old Gentleman. The Knights have been associated with a school or academy for over a thousand years, and always one serving in the vanguard of advances in science and philosophy.”

“Where was Abelson from?” asked Will.

“He was Swedish, but he’d been educated in Germany,” said Nepsted. “You see, Dr. Abelson was instrumental in the development of eugenics. That was his area of expertise.”

“Eugenics?” asked Nick, clueless, looking to Ajay for an explanation.

“The applied science of improving a contained population’s genetic makeup,” said Ajay in a hushed tone. “As a way of increasing desirable traits in its most gifted citizens while at the same time … reducing the reproduction of people with … less desirable traits.”

“Through genetic manipulation,” said Will.

“Oh,” said Nick quietly.

“But he took eugenics much further,” said Nepsted. “Abelson had developed experimental techniques that he believed would prove the theories he’d developed in Germany.”

Will felt his guts wrench at the realization. “In Germany,” he said. “With the Nazis?”

“We didn’t know about that when we joined,” said Nepsted sharply. “None of us did. Abelson never spoke of it. If we’d had any idea how twisted he was, this would never have happened.”

“Twisted how?” asked Ajay.

“The advancements he’d made meant we no longer had to wait generations, as the limits of eugenics required, to see radical improvements in human potential. Abelson believed his treatments could transform human potential, that healthy, living subjects could be elevated into superior states of physical, mental, and spiritual being in a matter of months. He called this accelerated form of evolution the Great Awakening.”

“Good God,” said Ajay.

“So Abelson built the hospital down there?” asked Will. “For this.”

“I believe that started not long after Abelson arrived in 1932. He told us our class of Knights had been selected for a great honor: the first members of the Order to benefit from his … enhancements. The first to Awaken, founding members of the modern order of Paladins. A new breed of warriors in the cause they’d been fighting for for a millennium.”

“Abelson did this to you?” asked Nick, furious.

Nepsted nodded.

“Dude, what the hell, so you just went along with it?” asked Nick.

Nepsted seemed frustrated by Nick’s outrage. “What can I say to make you see how this happened? We were just boys, stupid, overconfident egotistical boys. There was nothing rational about it. We believed in him, believed in the glory he was bestowing on us.”

“That can’t be the only reason,” said Nick.

“You’re right, Nick. We had a leader of our own, in our class of Knights, who believed in Abelson’s Awakening so ferociously that he made saying no seem unthinkable.”

“That must have been Hobbes,” said Will. “The boy you knew as Edgar Snow.”

“No, Will. He was an important member, second in command to the one I’m referring to, but it wasn’t Edgar.”

“Who was it, then?” asked Ajay.

“Franklin Greenwood,” said Nepsted.

Will sucked in his breath hard, involuntarily.

My grandfather.

“Franklin Greenwood, the second headmaster?” asked Ajay incredulously. “Son of the founder of the Center?”

“Frank was in our class of recruits. His name in the Order was Orlando. Traditionally Orlando plays the role of senior advisor to the Old Gentleman.”

Will’s mind raced:
My own grandfather was mixed up in this madness? How is that possible?

“Is he in the photograph of the dinner?” asked Will, slipping a copy from his pocket.

“Yes, of course, Frank was there that night,” said Nepsted.

“Show him to me, please,” said Will, holding the photo closer to Nepsted.

Nepsted looked at the photo impassively. A tentacle lifted out of the muck and delicately touched one of the figures in the picture that Will had hardly noticed before. A tall, slender boy seated at the end of the table, farthest from the camera. He looked more youthful than the others. Arms folded on the table, leaning forward, smiling vaguely.

But something in his eyes contradicted that smile, and then Will realized he wasn’t looking directly at the lens.

Franklin was looking straight at the back of Henry Wallace, seated in the foreground, nearest to the camera, turned in his seat to face Thomas Greenwood, if Will’s theory about who took the picture was correct.

When Will really studied him, Franklin looked not only
suspicious,
but also angry.

“Does this means the Center was in on this?” asked Nick.

“No, no, on the contrary,” said Nepsted. “The headmaster was aware his son had joined the Knights, but he seemed to think it was no more than a fraternity. Frank helped impose all the secrecy so his father wouldn’t find out what we were really doing. He was the leader of our group—a born leader, in his character—and Abelson’s Awakening was the path down which he led us.”

“But Thomas
did
find out about it,” said Will. “Or he had serious suspicions. Why else would he invite Henry Wallace to the school?”

“They were old, trusted friends,” said Nepsted, nodding. “Thomas sensed something was going wrong with his son and the Knights and he asked Wallace here to help him find out what it was. We didn’t know that at the time.”

“Was he too late?” asked Nick.

“By the night of that dinner, we’d already received the first weeks of treatments. Only injections at that point, but they’d gone flawlessly. We all felt healthy, strong, optimistic. Better than we’d ever felt, honestly.” His eyes clouded over with pain. “And Abelson was convinced that Wallace never suspected a thing.”

“But he was wrong,” said Will, studying him closely. “Wallace
was
on to you, wasn’t he?”

Nepsted closed his eyes, his face etched by the pain of the memories. “We were scheduled to begin the final stages. Two weeks of intense therapies that required us to remain secluded, out of sight.”

“How did they work that?” asked Nick.

“They created a cover story for our absence. The Knights traditionally took a senior year trip together; we’d be going to Europe, with Dr. Abelson as our chaperone. We staged everything to make it appear real.”

“The dinner was part of this?”

“Yes, to commemorate the trip. We packed our bags and the next night threw a farewell party. Over two hundred students came to send us off. The next morning we boarded a chartered plane. An hour into the flight we turned around, landed at a nearby airfield, and snuck back in the dead of night. That’s when they took us down to that hospital for the first time.”

“On that big elevator?” asked Will.

“Yes. They’d built that to help the construction, with a reception area to make it look normal and put us at ease. But before that, not everything went according to plan. Frank never got on that plane with us,” said Nepsted, his face cycling through another set of changes. “Dr. Abelson told us he’d been taken ill.”

“That wasn’t true?” asked Will.

“No. That was how they got Frank away from Abelson. We never saw him again.”

“And you think this was Wallace’s doing.”

Nepsted nodded. “Henry Wallace helped Thomas Greenwood rescue his son. That’s why he came in the first place. But Abelson didn’t seem concerned. In fact, he told
us
that Frank had been given a more important assignment.”

“If his father knew the score, why didn’t he get the rest of you out of there?” asked Nick.

“I don’t know the answer. Maybe he didn’t know. Maybe it’s because we weren’t his sons.
Most
of us never saw Frank again.”

“Most of you never left that building,” said Will.

“What happened down there, Raymond?” asked Nick softly.

Nepsted paused, and the words came much more haltingly. “We’d been in the hospital only a few days. Confined to our rooms. The new treatments were much more painful than before. As it grew worse, they kept us drugged … and then the process went wrong. Just one of us at first—George Gage, from Baltimore. We woke up one morning and George was gone. After that the others turned quickly. In less than a month.” Nepsted blinked repeatedly, his eyes filled with sorrow. “I saw them, Will.”

Will’s whole body shook with an anger that he had to work hard to contain. “We saw them, too. They’re still down there.”

“I know,” said Nepsted.

“Saw what?” asked Ajay blankly. “How could you have seen them?”

“Dude, were they in that room with those big
tanks
?” asked Nick.

“I’ll explain
later,
” said Will, and made sure Nick got the message before he turned back to Nepsted. “Keep going, Raymond.”

“We’d been living in a barracks together, but they separated us in locked rooms like jail cells once the others started disappearing.”

“We saw those, too,” said Nick.

“They took the others away one by one, until nine had vanished. None of the staff would tell us what had happened or where they’d gone. But I saw George, or what he’d become.”

“Until only two of you were left,” said Will. “You and Edgar Snow.”

“That’s right, Will,” said Nepsted. “Our cells were next to each other. We could whisper at night through the bars. They kept us for months, watching, testing constantly, but neither of us changed or got sick like the others. In the meantime—I found this out much later—they’d staged the crash to explain our disappearance. They dropped a real plane into Lake Superior, saying it had gone down on its way back from Europe. Of course no bodies were ever recovered.”

That sounds familiar, too,
thought Will.

“So they put up that memorial,” said Will. “And all your families thought you were dead.”

“Yes. Edgar and I realized we were prisoners. Locks on the doors now. Then I woke up one morning to find that they’d taken Edgar, too. I assumed he’d gotten sick like the others and if he was still alive that he must have thought the same about me.”

“But you were normal,” said Ajay. “Nothing had changed.”

“Oh yes, perfectly normal. A picture of health.” He held up his hands in a mockery of contentment. “I went on living, adjusting as best I could to solitary confinement. I was an only child, never many friends, so I was used to being alone. The nurses brought me my books and let me study, screened movies for me, brought me newspapers, always treated me kindly. But I soon realized that they had no intention of letting me conduct my life as ‘Raymond’ again. After the ‘accident,’ that was out of the question. Which I learned a year later, when Edgar came to see me.”

“Why?”

“To convince me to cooperate. Show me that the program had been a success after all. Because Edgar
had
changed, finally, but the process hadn’t killed or disfigured him. He’d lost his hair, he was much bigger and stronger, but beyond that he looked the same. He showed me these abilities—the things he could do just by looking at something, his strength and physical invulnerability, impervious to pain, disease, or heat or cold—and how he’d learn to control them. Even more striking as far as they were concerned was that Edgar could appear perfectly normal whenever he wanted or needed to.”