Convergence (24 page)

It was the last person she expected to see.

Arthur’s head wobbled without control, his body dead weight. He still lived, but with the point of the sword severing his spinal column near the base of his neck, he had little control of bodily functions.

His words slurred. “Poy… shun.”

Poison? She looked around. Will, Fil, Sarah, and Anna had heard the word and realized its ramifications. She turned and looked to the other side and saw that Adam had arrived in silence, his face showing the shock of the carnage on the floor, likely trying to work out the nature of both Assassins’ deaths even as he struggled to make sense of Arthur’s selfless move. She found the staggered eyes of Porthos, who’d backed away from the crumpled bodies before him, as if he thought moving far enough away would undo the damage done. But he’d heard Arthur’s low volume whisper and flicked his eyes back in the vicinity of where Abaddon lay. Of course. The crazed Assassin would take no chances, would ensure that even a scratch would end the life of those he attacked.

And now that poison and a severed spine would end the life of the man he’d served.

She looked back at Arthur, to eyes filled with confusion and recognition. He’d not known how to show any form of love in the entire time she’d known him. And yet he’d teleported to stop a blow that he’d indirectly ordered for her. Arthur, the man who feared teleportation above all else, had used his dormant skill to save the daughter he’d disowned and ordered murdered.

He recognized it as well, and the recognition was, in part, a realization that he’d done the unthinkable. He’d put another before himself. And it would be the last thing he ever did.

She felt a lump in her throat. The transformation she’d sought so long ago was finally realized on his death bed. And she would be that bed.

His breathing was erratic, but he forced the words out as best he could, his face taut with pain as the poison began its deadly rampage through his body. “E… lis… a… beff.” His words slurred, and he tried to lift his head enough to see her full face. The effort was too great. His chin settled upon her shoulder, and some combination of drool and blood from his mouth and tears from his eyes moistened that shoulder.

She didn’t know how she should feel. There was some sense of revulsion, that this evil man smothered her as he lay dying, seeping bodily fluids on her. Or a profound sense of relief and sadness through the grief that it had taken this selfless act of heroism to reveal the human buried so deeply inside him.

She wriggled around as best she could, taking the arm bent behind her and resting it against his head as it pressed against her shoulder in a minor embrace. It was perhaps too little thanks for his heroic act, but she was constrained by both an Energy-sapping net and twelve centuries of terrible cruelty to offer anything more.

“E… liss… a… biff… I… I…” The words were an effort beyond compare, the pain in his voice something she couldn’t comprehend. She didn’t know where the sword had shattered his vertebra, whether those shredded nerves inside his spine controlled speech or breathing or wriggling toes. The pain must be immense.

She’d noticed that the room had gone completely still and silent around them. It was as if they were in some soundless void where nothing else lived or breathed or moved.

“I… saww…ree…”

She felt a tear escape her eye at his slurred apology. It wasn’t much, but it was what he could do at this stage in his life. In time, she might come to accept his words as genuine. If she herself survived.

“Liss… beff… I… am… am…”

He took a deep breath, tried to speak, and failed. The next inhalation was so shallow she barely noticed it, even pressed up against him, the exhalation insufficient to move even one word into the audible range.

Arthur’s breathing slowed to the merest wisp of wind. His eyes widened, and he seemed to find the inner strength to pull in more air, enough for one final statement. His final exhalation carried with it three words and so powerful a sense of sincerity that she could do nothing but know his words as truth.

That truth destroyed her world.

As Arthur Lowell’s life winked out, the woman once known as Elizabeth screamed with a pain more profound than what she’d experienced the day he’d permitted a mob to beat her without mercy. Her scream subsided to a silence so deep that those in the room could only wonder if she’d joined Arthur in death.

Will and Fil had watched the entire scene unfold in shocked silence, and each wondered why they’d reacted too slowly to move to stop the fatal sword thrust. They shared a glance, baffled as to what Arthur had said in that last breath that had so rattled Hope. Was the netting causing erratic emotional states? It was the only thing Will could imagine that would explain why Hope seemed so despondent at the death of a man she’d once vowed to kill.

He heard a thud and turned.

Porthos had continued backing quietly away from Arthur and Hope as the attention of all in the room focused on the dying Leader of the Aliomenti. He’d been able to free himself enough to stand and plunge that deadly sword, a sword still suspended vertically by Arthur’s spine. But he’d not freed himself enough to generate the Energy to teleport, nor sufficient gait length to run. He’d moved slowly, silently, and possibly thought he’d reach a stairwell and then… somehow he’d find a way to escape. With everyone so focused on the dying man’s final words, he might have succeeded.

But he’d forgotten about the final person in the room.

Eva had shuffled quietly along behind him, gaining on him without alerting him to her slow prowl, and as his path veered near, she’d bumped him with just enough force to send him crashing to the floor.

And as the eyes in the room swerved to the new movement, they watched as Eva fell atop Porthos, pinning him beneath her, preventing him from rising and trying to escape again.

“Adam.” Eva’s voice, though weakened, retained its authority. Those still living glanced at the newest arrival, and then back at the woman who’d shared their deepest secrets with most recently deceased. “Please work to remove the net so it covers only the Hunter.”

Adam moved quickly as Will nodded. The net covering Porthos had loosened as the man moved around the room, as he continually worked to free himself from the bindings. He’d even managed to loosen and remove the thick, heavy boots he’d worn, further minimizing the sound of his escape efforts. Will wondered if he had some kind of countermeasure that would dissolve the netting upon accidental entrapment. Porthos’ eyes had regained a portion of their previous attitude and fire, but as Eva’s netting contacted him that fire began to fade. Porthos roared and tried to summon sufficient Energy to teleport away, but the combined netting sapped what little spark he’d found. He shouted again, with far less intensity, his eyes burning with anger and hatred as he saw the end in sight.

Adam moved to the headless corpse of William the Assassin and retrieved the sword the man had refused to pull against Hope. He moved to Eva and slid the metal into contact with the net and dropped the blade in surprise.

“Do take care to slice open only the net, Adam,” Eva said. Her eyes carried a faint hint of amusement. “The net conducts a special energy which pulls one’s Energy to itself to a degree directly proportional to the Energy emanated. Take care to address this before making further attempts at moving the strands aside.”

Adam blinked, looking at the sword and then Eva. “What?”

“The net is bad. Don’t touch it,” Anna translated.

“But…” Adam frowned, jogged off to Arthur’s private bath, and returned with a thick towel. After he wrapped the sword handle, he tried again. “I can still feel the effects, but they’re significantly less than before.” He pushed the first strands of the net aside as Sarah, Anna and Fil watched.

Will felt his wariness fade. He risked a quick glance at his tablet. Gena’s report detailed a successful end to the fighting in the Cavern and Adam’s imminent arrival at Headquarters—Will smiled—and Angel reported positive results from Eden. He pocketed the device as he grabbed one of the extra towels retrieved by Adam and moved toward Hope, ready to aid her as she tried to push the dead body off her and free herself of the netting binding her.

A loud, piercing shriek rattled his eardrums and he dropped the sword, trying to cover his ears and block out the horrendous noise reverberating throughout the building.

“What?” Porthos screamed, his eyes moving to the boots he’d discarded a dozen yards away. “No, no, turn that off! It’s not the right time for that now! It’s going to—”

His voice cut off as chaos erupted.

The gravity in the room vanished.

Will registered the genius and the horror all at once. The nanos, their greatest competitive advantage in the fight against the Aliomenti, were powered with small generators using gravity as a fuel replacement. Without gravity, without the power required to operate, the minute nanos stopped operating. A faint haze appeared in the room as the incalculable number of nanos controlled by the Alliance members present lost their inherent invisibility.

He had no time to wonder why he coughed at that instant, though with a second longer he’d realize he’d breathed in the fine dust in the air formed by the dormant nanos. Instead, he found himself propelled upward at an accelerating rate, falling toward the ceiling as a new, stronger source of gravity sucked him away from the floor.

Will had no time to figure out how to save the others and hadn’t even considered how he might save himself. He could do little but put his hands out to brace himself as the polished ceiling in Arthur’s penthouse level rushed to meet him at a dizzying rate of speed.

She felt the soft breeze
billowing through her hair as the hand tapped her tentatively on the shoulder. Angel turned and spotted a pale young woman standing before her. “Miss? I… don’t know what…”

She stopped and looked down at her hands. Angel’s gaze followed along, and she felt a sense of horror and revulsion as she realized what it was.

It didn’t much matter
whose
hand that was, because they’d not be using it again. Without a second thought, Angel surrounded the severed limb with nanos and buried it in the ground.

The woman smiled faintly. “Thanks. It was sitting on the ground next to me when we… I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s happened to me.” She burst into tears.

Angel swathed her with calming Energy, helping soothe the fear and uncertainty as she listened to her thoughts and emotions. Jessie had been waiting for the monorail train to arrive at the human village when she found herself standing inside the tent with thousands of her colleagues. Her first reaction was surprise, not that she’d moved somewhere new in an instant, but just how many people there were on the Island. She’d only started to grasp the idea that she’d moved when she looked down and saw the hand. She’d thrown her satchel atop the limb—which bled out on the ground—and hoped it would go away. Jessie’s distraction at the horrific image meant she’d missed the demonstrations and explanations, and she’d only followed everyone outside after looking to confirm the hand remained in place.

Uncertain what else to do, she’d winced and shuddered and picked the hand up, thinking she ought to show somebody. Nobody would believe her if she told them, so…

Angel spent the next few minutes walking through the explanation she’d given the others inside the tent, giving Jessie the thrill of a quick levitation into the air and a teleportation hop back to the ground. Jessie cried at the end, not from revulsion, but with excitement. She hoped she’d be able to learn to do what Angel did.

She phased out to avoid further questions, moving to a far corner of Eden, a place she’d found to be particularly calming in the days leading up to the invasion. She solidified and stood watching as the breakers crashed upon the rocky shore in this spot.

Her “seventh sense” buzzed. She’d had an intuitive understanding, not of the mood, but the general health of each member of her family since birth, and that had helped her during the extended absences of her parents. She’d known they were alive, and had even sensed the improvement in her mother’s health as she’d returned from the abyss of death decades earlier.

She felt a deep sense of unease, as if each of them were in great peril, their very lives in the balance. She felt that each of them remained in some degree of peril as they worked through the invasion at different sites. Charlie, of course, was here and free of danger. Gena and Adam both seemed fine, though Adam’s signal suggested a bit more stress than Gena’s. That didn’t make much sense if they were both mopping up after the thwarted Cavern invasion. Fil’s signal remained strong, though she’d sensed a short blip in its strength. Sarah and Anna seemed stressed, but in no unusually grave danger. Angel chided herself at the thought of her sister-in-law and niece, still amazed she’d so convinced herself of their deaths that she never noticed their signals hadn’t vanished even when they’d reputedly died at Abaddon’s hands. Her father and her brother seemed fine, though Fil’s signal fritzed out for a brief time.

But her mother seemed to be in constant danger.

Angel had never seen her mother in full health, knowing her only as a woman living in an impossibly and visibly aged body. It had been the ultimate motivation for begging participation in the direct assault on Headquarters. She’d see her mother as though for the first time. If something happened to her, Angel would never, in her mind, know her mother.

And now Hope’s life force signal suggested the woman to be in mortal danger yet again. She’d not know how everyone fared until they came back to Eden. If they came back to Eden.

She couldn’t wait that long. In her frustration, she kicked one of the large boulders.

As she hopped around on one foot, wincing in pain, she spotted Charlie leaning against a tree, arms folded, smiling at her. “I take it the rock won that battle?”

She stopped hopping and let her foot down. “Something like that.”

“No, you’re not allowed to go to Headquarters Island.” He moved away from the tree and walked toward her. “So don’t ask.”