Strangers and Shadows (31 page)

The lead guard had his pistol drawn.  Asher saw the flash of light from the weapon’s discharge as he jumped out.  Time seemed to slow down.  The blast from the weapon stretched into a beam of light ten feet long, and then there was darkness for a single instant before the lights of Desmond’s office flashed into existence.  

He looked at Jack and the woman in white.  Celia was there too, with her father and Wizard.  And then Asher felt a burning in his side.  He looked down, pulling his hand away from his torso.  He saw blood.  As he fell to the ground he finally placed where he’d seen the woman before.  It was the White lady.
 
He felt a surge of hatred, and then nothing, as he slipped
into
un
consciousness.

How Bad Is It?

Desmond had just opened his eyes when Asher collapsed.

Celia left her father’s side and rushed over.  She turned Asher on his back and immediately noticed the red stain on his shirt.  He was bleeding from his left side.  “Help me get this shirt off!  I need to see how bad it is.”

“Keep an eye on her,” Jack said to Wizard.  He went to Celia’s side and helped with the shirt.  He tore here and there, being careful not to disturb Asher’s body too much.  Asher never so much as stirred.  Jack was concerned.

With the shirt off, Celia could see the blaster wound clearly.  The bleeding had stopped on the outside, burned by the heat of the blaster beam.  She quickly rolled him on his side and checked his back for an exit wound.  She found none.  This was a bad sign.  If the shot had gone clean through, it would have cauterized itself, and unless vital organs were hit, it would have been nothing more than a minor flesh wound.  But with the beam stopping, a whole new realm of possibilities could have occurred.

“How bad is it?” Jack asked.  

Celia looked worried.  “Pretty bad…  It’s hard to say for sure.”  She sat back from the wound.  “He’s immune to my powers, so there’s no way for me to probe his injuries exactly.  There could be internal bleeding, his lung might have been hit, or his kidney, or worse his heart.  It depends on the angle of the blast, and it’s hard to make out for sure without an exit wound.  My best guess would be that the beam punctured a lung.  What I need to find out immediately, is whether the wound burned itself closed, or if he’s still bleeding in there.”  She turned to Wizard. 
“Do you have a body scanner with you?”

The old man shook his head with regret.
 
“No, I never thought to bring one here.  I have one back at my house, but with what we just did, I think the Seventh will be locked down quite tightly, especially my house.”

“I may be able to help you,” the voice belonged to Julia White, Celia’s mother.  She had been put in restraints, but was still standing in the room, watching the scene unfold.

“Not a chance, lady,” Jack said.  He turned to Desmond, who was still recovering from his own problems.  “Can we get her out of here?”

Desmond nodded as he coughed up phlegm into his hand.  “I’ve made arrangements, the men should be here for her in a few seconds.”

Indeed only a few seconds had passed when there was a knock at the door.  Desmond’s men came in and took the prime minister of the Seventh away.

“Dad, I’m worried,” Celia said.  “We don’t have the means to treat one of his kind here.”

“What do you propose we do?”

Jack spoke up.  “The Third.  They have medical facilities that can treat him and make sure he’s alright.”   

Celia nodded her vote.  

Desmond considered the options for a moment.  If the young man stayed here, his condition would almost certainly worsen.  The Seventh was out of the question, and the Fifth was a little too advanced.  They would ask questions about the burn wounds that no one wanted to answer.  That left either the Third or the Fourth.  “The Third then.”

“Don’t worry,” Jack said.
 
“I think we might know someone there who can help.”  Celia shot him a questioning look.  “He sorta helped out when you were out of it.”

“Alright, but we need to go now,” Celia said.

Jack nodded, punching in the coordinates.  There was a flash of light as he jumped out with Asher.  Celia followed close behind.

Desmond and Wizard were alone in the room.  “You feeling okay?” Wizard asked.

“I am.  Thank you,” Desmond replied.  He’d just finished removing the last of the nanites from his body and destroying them with the help of the jammer.  Energy rushed back into his limbs.  “I’m going to go have a talk with Julia.  Would you mind coming along and keeping an eye on everything for me?”

“Not at all,” Wizard beamed.  Though Desmond appeared to be in his mid-thirties, maybe early forties, he was much much older, and Wizard, who looked twice as old as Desmond, felt honored to be asked along.

They entered the room where Lady White was being held.  She was sitting, bound in a pair of restraints at the wrist and ankles.  Wizard stood off to the side and observed.  

“What’s going on, Julia?” Desmond began.

She laughed.  “Is that your big plan?  Come on in and just ask me what’s going on?”

Desmond pulled a chair over and sat down directly across from her.  “I’ve got all the time in the world, Julia.”

“Is that what you think?  It’s funny, actually, that you should bring up time.  After all, it’s what all this running around really boils down to, isn’t it?  We don’t have enough time.  So we go around blowing things up and chasing dreams, hurting the ones we love because we’re scared of dying.”

“Stop babbling, woman, and tell me what you’re up to.”

“Patience, Desmond.  After all, you have all the time in the world
…
”  She mocked him with a cruel smile.

“Yes, but I’m sure that whatever you’re planning requires
you
to oversee it.  I know how much you like to be in control of things—to be the one giving the order.”

“Time
and
Order…  There you go, Desmond.  You’ve hit upon another key to the puzzle.  Let me ask you this, what are you going to do with me once you’ve found out what you want to know?  Will you just let me go?”  She paused, giving him a few seconds to ponder it.  “No, you’ll never let me go again.  Not after, we’re through here.”

“What have you done, Julia?  Where is our son?”

“Kid?  You’re sure he’s yours then?  Pity about the name—I would have like to call him Julius, after his mother, of course.”

“I’ve felt the connection to him—he’s mine.  And yours too…  How did you hide him from me?”

Julia’s smile disappeared, replaced by a look of sadness.  “A few years after Celia was born, before I left you both, I became pregnant.  You were away on a mission and I took Celia to the Seventh to visit.  It was there that I discovered the pregnancy, mostly by chance.  It was only a few days since conception and I was afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of you…  Of love…  Of losing control…  Take your pick.  I couldn’t have another child with you.  I felt too much of myself slipping away between you and Celia already.  I had the embryo removed and frozen in the Seventh.”

Desmond had so many questions.  He wanted to ask them all at once.  But instead, he sat in silence, staring straight ahead into the darkness of the past.

He wasn’t aware how much time passed, but at some point Julia began speaking again.  “Years ago, someone broke into my office and stole the embryo.  I never found out who.  I’ve always wondered if it was someone from the Sixth or Seventh, or perhaps some new player altogether.  Anyway, we lost Kid, and I spent years trying to track him down, not knowing if he’d been born or not.  Eventually I heard rumors coming out of the Fifth, and it was there that we discovered him.  Unfortunately, your agents caught wind of my investigation and you also found him.  What did you think
,
I wonder
?
  Here this boy is, and you can feel his relation to you, but you have no idea where he came from.  It must have carved you up inside all over again.”

Desmond felt a pang inside his chest.  He had been hurt when Julia left, and discovering that he had a son had left him confused and elated.  Part of him hated Julia for doing this, and the other part was in awe and wonder at the son they’d produced.  “If you harm Kid in any way...”

“Take it easy, Desmond, I have no desire to harm our children any more than you do.”

“Then explain why you would torture and experiment on our daughter.”

“Ah, yes, Celia.  She’s become quite her father’s prodigy, hasn’t she?”  Julia obviously wasn’t going to do this the easy way.

“Julia, I don’t want to have to force my way into your mind, but if you won’t tell me what I need to know, I’ll have no choice.”

“That’s right, Desmond, I almost forgot how you like to think of yourself as a gentleman…  Always doing the right thing, taking into consideration the rights of other beings, never causing harm if it can be helped…” 
S
he loved watching him squirm over the moral dilemma.  No, if he wanted to know what she was up to, he would have to play by her rules.  “Come on inside, Desmond.  Resisting you was always my favorite part.”  A wicked smiled crept across her face.

Desmond supposed he knew it would always come down to this.  He reached out to her mind and found the wall shielding it.  He probed gently at first, searching for any signs of weakness.  As he expected, there were none.  No doubt she had been practicing for some time.  He gathered up all of his psychic strength and beat down against her mental shield.  She cried out in pain, and the shock of it caused him to stop.

Julia began laughing.  “Come on
,
Desmond, is that all you got?  You’ll never get what you need to know if you can’t stand the pain this is going to cause you.”

He knew she was right.  No matter what pain he caused her, his own pain would be greater.  Not the physical pain, but the pain he received at causing another’s pain.  The pain of violating his principles.  She knew this, and she reveled in it.  He bit down and proceeded once more.

The screams were louder this time.  Desmond couldn’t tell if she did it on purpose or if it really was that painful.  He couldn’t allow himself to care, however.  There would be time for caring later.  

He tunneled deeper into her mind, beneath the surface thoughts, and began seeking out what he needed to know. 
Her
mind
was
a vast series of connections and
Desmond had to
follow the roads to get to the destinations.  Desmond began looking for something familiar to him, a road that he could follow to the information he sought.  He found it.  It was a memory of Desmond, Julia, and Celia at their vacation home by the sea.  He and Julia were curled up on the porch swing, underneath a blanket.  They were talking about their life, and watching Celia play out in the yard.  Celia was only eight, but already she was adept at moving things with her mind and talking with plants and animals.  She had picked up a pile of small rocks and was spinning them around her in a circle while she laughed and giggled and spun in the opposite direction with her arms held out like a bird’s wings.  The surrounding grass grew up twelve inches and flowers sprang up where there were none before.  All of them swayed back and forth, dancing along with her.  Small birds joined in, flying around the rocks in the same direction as Celia creating a vortex of rock, girl, bird, and air.  The birds were singing in unison, each one chirping the same song.

Desmond heard Julia’s thoughts as she watched their daughter.  She was afraid.  She was scared of their daughter, and more, of the strange world in which she lived.  She couldn’t understand it. 
For lack of a better term, i
t freaked her out.  “Celia,” Julia called out, her voice betrayed nothing of what she was feeling, “come and wash up for dinner.”

Celia stopped spinning.  The rocks fell to the ground with thuds and clacks and the birds split off in multiple directions, released from their spell.  The grass and flowers remained, but ceased their swaying.  Celia smiled at her mother and then ran off into the house, happy to do her mother’s bidding.

Desmond went back to the fear and followed the roads in Julia’s mind that split off from it.  At the end of some he found himself, while others held such atrocities and apocalypses that he found himself cringing at the possibilities.  At last, he found the road that led to Kid.

He saw Kid hooked up to lab equipment, his abilities being tested.  He saw him in classes with other children his age.  In another scene Julia was speaking to Kid, explaining she was his mother.  Kid looked confused. 
How else should he feel
, Desmond wondered.  To find out your whole life has been a lie, that the woman who gave birth to you is not the woman who conceived you.  From Julia he felt a strange emotion, not love, but something close to it for the boy.  And then he found what he had been searching for.  He gasped, instantly breaking the mental connection.

“You’re insane!” Desmond said.  He had seen the plans Julia had for the boy, what she had tried to do with Celia and himself, and what she planned on doing to the Sixth.