Authors: Adrian Howell
Candace slowly took my hand and held it tightly as she said into my head,
“I promise.”
“Thank you,” I whispered.
“But write her a letter, Adrian,” insisted Candace, forcing a smile through her tears. “Do it for me.”
I nodded slowly. “I will.” Then I smiled too, adding, “But you don’t get to read it.”
Later, Candace found me some paper and an envelope. As she and the others prepared lunch in the kitchen, I sat alone at the writing desk in Alia’s room, trying to think of what I could write. After what I had committed myself to last night, I felt there was nothing I could say that would do my sister justice, and I was tempted to simply seal the envelope with some blank paper. After all, what were the chances of Alia ever opening it? But that just didn’t seem right after the terrible responsibility I had forced upon Candace.
I looked over at Alia’s calm, sleeping face, and decided that the truth wasn’t such a bad thing after all. Slowly, I let the words, along with the last of my tears, fall onto the paper. As to what, specifically, I said to her, that is between me and Alia.
On the front of the envelope, I wrote simply, “To my sister.” Then, neatly folding my letter, I slid it into the envelope. I was about to seal it, but I stopped.
Looking over at Alia again, I carefully removed my amethyst pendant from around my neck. I held it in my hand for a minute, and then placed the stone into the envelope with my letter. I wasn’t exactly sure why I did that. Perhaps I just didn’t need it anymore. Or maybe I was asking for a miracle after all.
It was a Sunday and Dr. Hanson’s clinic was closed. I ate lunch with Dr. Hanson and everyone in the dining room that day. Ed Regis and I were leaving right after the meal. Scott, Rachael and Candace would remain here for two more days before loading Alia into a car and heading out to a semi-independent Guardian settlement where they hoped to find work and shelter.
As we wrapped up our farewell lunch, Ed Regis said to Dr. Hanson, “We’re sorry if we overstayed our welcome.”
“Not at all,” said Dr. Hanson. “It was nice having people in my house again.”
“We were really lucky to find someone like you,” said Rachael. “It’s not often that we meet someone so understanding of our kind.”
Dr. Hanson turned to me and said, “I’m sorry I couldn’t be of greater help, Adrian. I did my best.”
“I know,” I said, shaking his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”
Having quietly disposed of Scott’s bullet-ridden van, Ed Regis had acquired two new vehicles for us. In addition to another van for Scott’s team, he had found a small black sedan for himself and me. Our bags were already on board.
“Don’t you want to see her one more time?” Candace asked me at the front door.
I shook my head. “I’d rather not.”
“Where’s your letter?”
“I left it on her bed,” I said. “The envelope is bulging a bit because I put my pendant in there too. Make sure she gets it if she wakes up.”
“I will,” said Candace, and then added with a wink, “Don’t worry, Adrian. I won’t open it.”
“Thanks.”
“Where’s your jacket?” she asked. “It’s still cold out there.”
I swore under my breath. “I left it upstairs in Alia’s room.”
I really didn’t want to go back up there and have to say goodbye all over again.
Candace nodded understandingly. “I’ll go get it for you.”
She did, and once we were outside, we spent a few last minutes saying goodbye to each other. But it wasn’t like the first two times when I had left her to head for the Historian and to the Resistance. Though I had given Candace no details, she knew that I wasn’t coming back. She knew that this was our last time together.
“Take care of yourself, Adrian,” she said bravely as we embraced on the porch, “and I’ll take care of Alia.”
“You take care of yourself too, Candace,” I said. “I love you.”
“I love you, too,” said Candace, holding me tighter. Her voice cracked a little as she said, “It’s just not fair.”
“I know,” I said to her softly. “I’m really sorry that it has to be this way. You know I never wanted any of us to be a part of this war.”
“I know you didn’t,” said Candace. Barely fighting back her tears, Candace said into my head,
“I don’t want you to go, Adrian. I don’t want you to die.”
“Listen to me, Candace,” I said firmly. “This war is going to end soon. The world is going to change. It’s going to be a better place.”
“But you won’t be there.”
“I’ll be there,” I told her as I wiped a teardrop from her cheek. “One way or another, I’ll always be there.”
“It won’t be the same.”
“No,” I agreed quietly, “it won’t.”
As Candace cried into my shoulder, I was a little surprised at my own detached calm over this. Didn’t I care that we would never see each other again? It was like I had left the bulk of my emotions up in Alia’s room, sealed inside that envelope along with my pendant. Of course I would miss Candace, and I would miss everyone, and I would miss life. But I had made my decision. And I was no longer the unbalanced child who believed that life should be in any way fair.
I let Candace cry herself out, and when her eyes finally dried up, she gave me a sad little smile and one last, long, beautiful kiss goodbye.
Later, as Ed Regis drove our sedan into the night, I found two things in my jacket pocket that I hadn’t expected. One was Alia’s unicorn pendant. The other was a little note in Candace’s handwriting that read, “Don’t forget to believe in miracles, Addy.”
I put the unicorn around my neck. I kept the note in my pocket.
From there, it took fifteen days, some luck, and a little help from the Guardians, but Ed Regis and I finally managed to locate a God-slayer sect that would hear our proposal.
Our meeting came with conditions: We would approach them unarmed, openly wearing metal chains to prove that we were drained. We would speak to them at gunpoint. And if they didn’t like what we said, they would execute us then and there. All this I agreed to. Honestly, it felt pretty trivial.
“Adrian?” said Ed Regis. “Adrian!”
I looked up from the chains around my wrists. “Are they here?”
“They’re here,” confirmed Ed Regis, finally cutting the engine. “Step out slowly.”
We carefully opened the doors and got out of our car.
I saw five men standing side by side at the end of the alleyway. Ed Regis and I spread our arms out wide and slowly walked toward them.
When we were twenty paces apart, the man in the center called out, “That’s far enough, demons. Get down on your knees.”
We did, keeping our arms spread wide and our chains in plain sight. Ed Regis, being non-psionic, had no reason to wear the chains, but the Slayers didn’t know that.
The men cautiously walked toward us, pistols drawn and aimed at our heads. I kept my eyes straight forward. The man who had spoken walked around us once in a wide circle. Then he said quietly, “You two have an appointment with Father Stanton, and later with God.”
Adjusting the position of our chains, the men painfully handcuffed our wrists behind our backs, blindfolded us and loaded us onto a vehicle. Nobody spoke a single word as we rode for what felt like an hour, and then we were led into a building. They took us down two flights of stairs.
By our echoing footsteps on the concrete and the familiar dank air, I knew that we were right where I wanted to be right now.
“Kneel,” commanded a voice.
I did. My blindfold was removed from behind and I found that I was no longer with Ed Regis. An elderly man was standing before me, dressed in a simple black suit. He had a gangly form and curly blond hair that reminded me just a little of Ralph.
“I’m Adrian Howell,” I said, looking up at him.
“I am Father Stanton,” he replied, a predator’s smile on his lips.
“Where is my friend?”
“He is safe in another room,” said the Slayer priest. “Please forgive my caution, Adrian. I have never welcomed any lesser gods into my home. Not like this, anyway. What brings you to us?”
“The will of your greater god,” I informed him. “Probably.”
“And what do you seek?”
I looked him in the eye. “Death.”
“Then speak your piece, and let the Lord judge your words.”
As he listened to my carefully abridged story and why I had come to him, the elderly priest’s bright blue eyes shifted from disgust to astonishment, and finally to jubilant excitement.
“Let me see if I fully understand what you’re proposing, young demon,” said Father Stanton, unable to keep the sick little grin off of his face. “You want us to surgically implant a voice-activated bomb inside your body so that you can kill the Angels’ last master controller and end the unholy tyranny that is threatening our world?”
I nodded, adding, “And, as an extra bonus, I die too. That means you have nothing to lose by letting me go.”
“Your demon blood disgusts me,” said the priest, “but perhaps this is the Lord’s way of absolving you of your sins.”
“Nothing will absolve me of my sins,” I replied evenly. “Not after this. So, do we have a deal?”
“If we can make this work, then we have a deal,” he said. “You will remain in our custody until we are ready.”
“Then I expect acceptable living conditions here,” I said. “Drained in the basement is fine, but you will at least provide some bedding and proper meals.”
Since I had no hiding protection, remaining drained and two stories underground was necessary to keep me out of sight from the psionic world. But Father Stanton was exceptionally accommodating in all other regards. The Slayers furnished one of their concrete cells with a carpet and proper furniture, including a desk, a table and two beds so that Ed Regis and I could share the room.
Ed Regis was still uneasy about putting our fates in the hands of religious fanatics, but I told him to get over it. “Relax, Ed Regis,” I said to him. “The worst they can do is kill us.”
Father Stanton had even given us permission to leave our cell with an escort and visit other parts of the basement. The underground area wasn’t just for storage or keeping psionics. It was almost as extensive as the gathering place under the former New Haven One building, with a shooting range, training gym, and living quarters for many of the Slayers. This was a fairly large Slayer sect, and the above-ground living areas were strictly for the high-ranking members.
Ed Regis and I lived in Father Stanton’s basement for over a week as the Slayers prepared the device. Despite my continued hatred of this sick religious cult bent on exterminating psionics worldwide, and despite their equally vehement hatred of us, over the sunless days and moonless nights, slowly, we got to know each other just a little.
We eventually managed to convince Father Stanton that Ed Regis wasn’t a psionic, the logic of our argument being that if we really didn’t want to be found, which we obviously didn’t, then Ed Regis wouldn’t agree to remove his draining chains. And just like that, Father Stanton stopped calling Ed Regis a demon and apologized for his mistake.
I discovered that the Slayers, at least among themselves, were pretty civil people. They rarely shouted, never swore, said grace before meals and prayed before bed. They ate simple, primarily vegetarian food and lived a frugal life. At first glance, they looked like hardworking model citizens.
But that didn’t change the fact that they despised psionics with every fiber of their being. Father Stanton often sat me down after lunch or dinner and made me read selected passages from his Bible, after which he would explain to me how these words clearly justified the cold-blooded murder of all psionics. This was the same holy book that Mark had always used to preach tolerance and love. I found it amazing how easily Father Stanton could twist around its words. Still, I hadn’t come here for a debate on theology, so I nodded and smiled at him, which probably annoyed him even more than if I had argued.
“You are truly strange, young demon,” he said to me, clearly frustrated at my refusal to give him more reason to hate me. “I can’t imagine what you are thinking.”
“I get that a lot,” I told him.
The next day, Father Stanton visited our cell just after breakfast. He was carrying a round metal ball the size of a small apple. It was finally complete.
“Here it is,” said Father Stanton, handing the ball to Ed Regis. Ed Regis looked at it for a moment and then passed it to me.
“It’s a little high-tech compared to what we usually work with,” explained Father Stanton as I studied the thin lines on the casing and tried to figure out how it opened. “As per your request, it comes with a voice-activated detonator.”
“The yield?” asked Ed Regis.
“Comparable to a hand grenade,” said Father Stanton. “And I’m told that once implanted, the microphone power will last at least ten days, maybe twenty.”
“I’m not about to wait around,” I said.
“Go ahead and test the voice activation,” said Father Stanton. “It won’t explode.”
“What do I say to it?”
Father Stanton smiled. “You say to it, ‘Let there be light.’”
I heard a little click inside the ball which I assumed was the detonator switch. I frowned. “It answers to any voice?”
“Yes,” confirmed Father Stanton, “and the voice recognition may not be entirely accurate. We’ve found that it responds equally well to, ‘Get bears to fight,’ and other similarities. But the good part is that since it will be implanted under your flesh, the command will have to be given in a fairly loud voice for the detonator to hear it. It’s unlikely to be set off accidentally by background chatter.”
“Can it distinguish sounds from under flesh?” asked Ed Regis.
“We have, of course, tested that to make sure it works,” said Father Stanton, and then added hastily, “With a pile of steak meat.”
“Then let’s get this over with,” I said, tossing the bomb back to Father Stanton.
They operated on me that very afternoon.
The Slayer doctor gave me a towel to bite on, but nothing else for the pain as he cut open my lower left side. I clenched my fists and kept myself from letting out even the slightest whimper, knowing that the Slayers would enjoy seeing me in pain. Besides, I knew that I deserved this pain. The Slayer doctor did a fairly good job stitching me up, and in three more days, though the cut still throbbed when I moved, I was fit enough to travel.