Authors: Adrian Howell
Putting down the plates, I hurried back to the living room. Terry and James joined us in moments. Being a member of Wood-claw’s security team, I knew that the main panic alarm was a single, non-stop tone which meant battle stations for everyone, but this current beeping was just a mild caution. James picked up the phone receiver once and put it back down, and the beeping stopped.
“Just stay put,” said James who, like me, knew Wood-claw’s security protocols inside and out. “That was a low-level alert. No immediate threat. We should be getting a call soon.”
The phone rang normally a minute later and James picked it up again to hear what the commotion was about. The security team on duty had to call every apartment in the building so James kept the conversation short, but he still got the basic story.
“There’s been an incident at the new outpost,” James explained to us. “The Knights caught a pair of Seraphim snooping around their neighborhood. It looks like they were alone, but we have to be ready just in case there’re more headed this way.”
“Scott’s out there,” I said, remembering that Scott had gone on a sleepover inspection tour since yesterday morning and wasn’t due back until later tonight.
“They said ‘caught’?” Terry asked James. “Caught and not killed?”
“Caught,” confirmed James. “Alive.”
“I’m going out there,” said Terry.
“Me too,” James and I said together.
“Then I’m going too,” said Alia.
I shook my head. “Mrs. Harding won’t let you go, Alia. Memory rules.”
“I don’t care about Mrs. Harding’s rules,” Alia said defiantly. “I’m going.”
I knew why Alia was being so adamant, of course. She was afraid that we – or rather specifically I – was going to hurt or kill the Angel captives. And she was perfectly justified in her assumption.
“You being there isn’t going to change anything that happens,” I warned her.
“I don’t care,” Alia said again. “I’m still going.”
“Fine,” said Terry. “But none of us know the location of the outpost, so we can’t go without a guide, and that means we’ll need Harding’s okay.”
I breathed a silent sigh of relief as Terry picked up the phone to call Mrs. Harding. Ed Regis hadn’t even joined the conversation, knowing he would never be allowed to visit the outpost. Though for different reasons, Alia would be treated the same as him, which meant that I didn’t have to be the one forcing her to stay at home while Terry, James and I questioned the captured Seraphim.
Mrs. Harding’s phone line was busy and Terry had to call five times before she got through to one of Mrs. Harding’s grandchildren, who informed Terry that Grandma had just left for the outpost.
Slamming down the receiver, Terry said disgustedly, “We should have just gone upstairs!”
“Maybe they’re still in the parking lot,” said James.
Terry jumped at the idea and sprinted out, returning three minutes later, all smiles.
“Nice call, James,” she said. “I got Harding waiting for us in their van. But there are only two seats available.” Terry looked at Alia, saying firmly, “You’re not coming. Harding’s orders.”
Alia stared back at her in stony-faced silence.
Only two seats. James and I looked at each other. After a moment of awkward silence, James nodded and said, “You go, Adrian. You and Terry are the ones who need to ask the questions.”
“Personally, I would rather it was you,” I said honestly. “But you’re probably right. We’ll try to call you from the outpost.”
In addition to Mrs. Harding, Terry and me, the van carried five more, all Knights including Mr. Beryl. We weren’t blindfolded this time, but Mr. Beryl later deleted our memories of the roundtrip. In fact, the only part of my visit to the Wood-claw outpost that I remember starts as Terry and I accompany Mrs. Harding down a flight of creaky wooden stairs into a musty basement. The other Knights that came with us in the van stayed upstairs.
We stepped into a makeshift jail cell of concrete and bricks. Scott and two other Wood-claw Knights were there, including Hammer, the grumpy Knight who had originally driven us into Wood-claw. He still looked ill-tempered, but he had good reason this time and he wasn’t the only one.
The Seraphim were both dead.
“We’re sorry,” Hammer said to Mrs. Harding. “They were alive until a short time ago.”
The corpses sat slumped down on the floor, their backs resting against the far wall. Their wrists and ankles shackled, the Seraphim had been psionically drained and completely immobilized with heavy iron chains. Their heads were both bloody messes.
“What happened here?” demanded Mrs. Harding.
Hammer explained, “We caught them by surprise and managed to restrain them without too much trouble. But then, down here, we made the mistake of leaving them unattended for a few minutes. No more than five minutes, but it was enough.”
I looked at the limp bodies again and realized what had happened. Unable to escape, unable to even move, the Seraphim had bashed their heads against the concrete wall over and over until their skulls cracked open.
“We just didn’t expect them to kill themselves,” the other Knight said apologetically.
“Why not?” I asked, frustrated.
“Randal Divine’s converts don’t often commit suicide,” explained Scott. “They prefer to fight to the death, and even when they’re caught, they never give up trying to fight.”
Actually, I did know this. But that signified something even more important which Terry voiced first. “These guys weren’t ordinary scouts,” she said, frowning at the corpses. “They knew something.”
“If they knew anything important, why were they being used as scouts?” asked Scott.
“Maybe they weren’t scouts at all,” suggested Terry. “Maybe they found this place by accident or something. Whatever the case, they didn’t want to risk being delved.”
“That’s for sure,” I muttered, staring at all the blood covering the dead men’s faces and stuck to their hair. It wasn’t the kind of suicide that just anyone could handle. Not like chugging sleeping pills or jumping off a bridge. You had to be converted to do something this crazy.
Another dead end. We had seen many on the road this year. But this dead end was an especially frustrating one. After all, these Seraphim had killed themselves to avoid interrogation, which practically proved that they had something that could have helped us. Perhaps just a link to another link to yet another, but that still might have taken us all the way to the king himself. And to the queen.
“We need to find out who they were,” Terry said quietly. “And more importantly, who they knew.”
“We can start with the Wolf database,” I suggested. “Did these guys have any ID?”
“No,” said Scott. “We found nothing at all on them.”
“Then let’s wash their faces and take some pictures.”
Fortunately, most of the damage to their heads was on the backs and sides, so once we wiped the blood off of their faces, we got fairly decent mug shots of them. We also took fingerprints and hair samples, and Scott informed us that one of the men had been a peacemaker while the other was a light-foot. Evidence in hand, we returned to Wood-claw, arriving just in time for a steak dinner that Alia and Ed Regis had prepared for us. But I had lost most of my appetite.
“Sorry we couldn’t call,” I said to James. “It didn’t go as planned.”
“Things rarely do,” commented James. “So what did you find out?”
I preferred our dinner conversation to be about something other than people bashing their own skulls apart in desperate suicide, but James and Ed Regis were eager to be filled in, so I let Terry make our report.
“We need to know who these guys are,” said Terry, passing the pictures of the Seraphim’s faces to Ed Regis.
Ed Regis frowned. “Unfortunately, the portable version of the database doesn’t have face or fingerprint matching. I’d need access to the main database at my old office to do a proper search.”
“Except that your office belongs to someone else now,” James pointed out.
“We’ll just have to sift through the mugs on the portable and see if we can match up the faces on our own,” said Ed Regis.
“How long is that going to take?”
“There are enough entries in the database to take years, but I’ll start with the most likely suspects. I can search by psionic powers and affiliations. Still, it could take several weeks, and that’s assuming their faces really are in the database.”
“We’re gone the day after tomorrow,” James reminded him. “You promised to leave the database in Wood-claw.”
“That is a problem,” admitted Ed Regis.
“I have a better idea,” said Terry. “We can just take these photos to the Resistance. They’ll have more current data on the Angels and might be able to identify them. These guys were important, after all.”
“Agreed,” said Ed Regis. “But we should leave copies of these pictures with Scott and let him take a crack at it too. If he gets lucky, he can contact us in Lumina.”
Alia had been silent throughout the entire meal, and remained so even after her bath.
“You feel sorry for those men?” I asked as we got ready for the night.
Alia winced.
“Is it that obvious?”
“To me, yes,” I said. “I feel sorry for them, too.”
Alia looked up at me in surprise.
“You do?”
I nodded. “Those men did what they did because they were converted. They were victims of Randal and Catherine just like everyone else. They would have done anything for their master.”
“You’re really scared of that, aren’t you, Addy?”
“I’m not going to end up like them, Alia.”
Alia gazed at me silently. I studied her face for a moment, and then cried exasperatedly, “Oh, for the last time, it’s just a precaution!”
“A stupid precaution,”
Alia said resentfully.
“It helps me sleep.”
Alia sighed and gave me a sympathetic smile.
“Then you better try to convince Ed and Terry to change their minds.”
I shook my head. “It’s okay, Ali. You can keep the majority.”
The next day was our last full day in Wood-claw. I spent much of it with Candace, who had taken a day off from work just to be with me. Privacy was still a rare commodity around here, but I asked Alia nicely and she agreed to spend the day out of our way.
I hadn’t forgotten my vow or the Historian’s warning in my dream, but upon careful consideration, I had come to the conclusion that my vow was specifically about not having children. And I made sure that we didn’t. Aside from that detail, exactly how Candace and I spent our last day together is strictly need-to-know, as in you don’t.
Finally, the day of our departure was upon us. We were leaving at 6am, but even so, a fair-size crowd had come to see us off. Alia huddled with her combat kids while the rest of us shook hands with the adults. James and I were given a round of applause by our security co-volunteers who assured us that our work had been flawless, though we remembered none of it. Terry also received much thanks for her short but highly intensive combat courses, and even Ed Regis got a few handshakes.
Goodbyes were always tough, but this one was especially hard for me. We had no idea how long we would be in Lumina or where we might head from there, so I couldn’t give Candace any assurances at all.
“I really hope I see you again, Adrian,” Candace whispered into my good ear as we stood in tight embrace. “But if I don’t, it better not be for a lack of trying.”
“I promise,” I said, and she kissed me in a way that made me levitate.
When we broke apart, Candace said seriously, “Take care of Alia, okay?”
“I always do,” I replied, touching my feet back down onto the floor.
“And take care of yourself too.”
“I’ll try.”
I tried to kiss her again, but she stopped me. Taking a step back, Candace giggled and said playfully, “So you have something to come back for.”
I smiled.
One last round of goodbyes, thank-yous and well-wishing, and our five-man team was blindfolded and led down into the building’s basement parking lot and onto a van. Scott and Rachael accompanied us again along with Wood-claw’s Head of Security, Ms. Isabel “Tigress” Ferris. Our blindfolds were removed once our van was sufficiently away from the Wood-claw building.
Although one of the reasons we had originally come to Wood-claw was so that Terry could recruit a few more Knights for a possible attack on an Angel stronghold, that plan had been put on indefinite hold, so we weren’t actually taking Scott, Rachael or Ms. Ferris into Lumina with us. It was just the five of us again.
I looked over at Alia, who had the window seat next to me. My sister was silently staring outside, unfocused, watching the city go by. We passed into a tunnel. Catching my reflection in the glass, she turned to me and smiled.
“Thanks, Addy,” she said quietly.
“For what?” I asked.
“For not telling me to stay behind in Wood-claw.”
“I wouldn’t have dared,” I said with a chuckle. Then I asked, “Are you still mad at me?”
Alia shook her head.
“What we do,” I said slowly, “and where we’re going now… is dangerous, Alia. I’m going to need you in my corner.”
Alia nodded and whispered into my head,
“Always.”
Chapter 8: Raider and the Phantom Train
Within an hour, we reached an airport at the edge of the city where a small chartered airplane was standing by. There we bid our driver, Scott, goodbye, but Rachael and Ms. Ferris boarded the airplane with us. We were asking the Guardian Resistance to break a few of their security protocols regarding access to their Lumina headquarters, so Ms. Ferris had agreed to come along and vouch for us. Rachael, of course, was our hider, and though she could have simply given us enough individual protection to last up to the handover, after what happened the last time, she didn’t want to take any chances.
We landed in the nearest large city to Lumina early that evening. From there, Ms. Ferris drove us in a rented van to our rendezvous with the Resistance representatives who were in charge of smuggling us into the Angel city.
I had been expecting our meeting to take place in some grimy back alley, or perhaps under a bridge, but it turned out to be nothing so secret-agent-ish like that. Instead, Ms. Ferris pulled our van into the parking lot of a large and expensive-looking Chinese restaurant. We parked alongside a dark purple minibus with tinted windows and off-road tires, which I guessed was our next transport. It certainly looked like the kind of vehicle the Guardians would use.