Finding Sage (The Rogue Book 1) (21 page)

38.

            
 
“Are you ready?” Eli asked.

              “I think so,” Silas responded.  “You’re sure the rest of you can’t come with me?”

              Eli shook his head. 

              “Sage said that Tariq, Salah, and I need to stay here.”

              “You can’t stay in the hotel; you know that.”

              “Yeah, I know.  He meant we need to stay in the area.  We’ll be fine.”

Silas looked at Eli’s wild green eyes and scraggly beard and remembered all of the troubling times they’d been through. 

              “You know Eli, there’s a question that I’ve been meaning to ask you.”

              “Yeah?”

              “The way you talk is really weird.  But you only talk like that part of the time.  Why?”

              Eli smiled.

              “Over the years, I’ve seen and met a lot of different people and I’ve had a lot of different lives,” Eli said.  “I’ve kind of adopted things from all of them, so different parts of me come out at different times.”

              “Where did the ‘You went like boom and then like whoa!’ come from?”

              “Hipsters,” Eli said with a smile.

              Silas cocked his head with curiosity.  Eli shook his head in response.

              “You’ve really gotta get educated someday, bro.”

              Silas smiled.

              “When I get back.”

Eli picked up a backpack  that was sitting next to the wall and gave it to him.

“This should be more than enough money to get you guys there.  There’s also some supplies in there you might need.”

“How did you get this?”

“Different lives, bro.  Some of them made a lot of money for me.”

              In return, Silas clasped Eli’s forearm, a sign of care and trust.

              “How will I find you again?” Silas asked.

              “Don’t worry about it,” Eli said.  “He’ll tell you everything you need to know.”

              Silas nodded. 

              “Goodbye, old friend,” Eli said. 

              “Are you guys ready?” Silas asked Alice and Lilly.  They both nodded.  They said their final goodbyes and walked out the door.  The three of them walked out of the hotel room and looked back on it with sobriety as they walked away.  This day had to come, but they didn’t want it to.  They had learned to trust one another, but now they had to part ways.  They hoped their paths would cross again, but for the time being they had to focus on the task at hand.  That meant getting to Australia.             

              No matter how insane that sounded, even in the privacy of Silas’ own mind.

              As they walked down the streets of London, Lilly held Silas’ hand tightly and he talked with Alice.  Although they now understood each other, they wanted to know why they were the way they were.  They also talked about each other’s likes and dislikes, as well as hypothetical scenarios such as what they would do if the world was different.  Some of the questions they were asking they knew the answers to, but they enjoyed talking about them.  Some of the answers also surprised them.

              “You don’t like milk?” Silas asked incredulously.

              “No, I don’t,” She said with a smirk.

              “How?”

              “I don’t know, I . . . just don’t.  Maybe it was the milk we had at the capital.  Or I just don’t like milk.”

              “Wow…”

              “Maybe you’re the weird one for liking it,” Alice teased.

              “Or maybe I like it because I worked so hard for it,” Silas said.  “My friend Grayson and I would nearly have killed to get our hands on the stuff.  It didn’t come our way very often and when it did, we would nearly always end up sick from drinking too much of it at once.”

              Alice chuckled, then remembered the dark-headed boy she had seen through Silas’ mind.

              “I saw him.  After I blacked out,” Alice said.  “What happened to him?”

              Silas stopped at the corner for traffic before he answered.

              “He joined the U.N. when he was 18,” Silas said.  “He went to another country and waited a few months so he wouldn’t know where I was.  It was his way of telling me it wasn’t a betrayal.  It was, though.”

              “Was he not—?”

              “No, he isn’t one,” Silas said, quickly picking up on Alice’s hesitation to say the word in public.  “He was an orphan who helped me because I was alone.  He never allowed it to shape his opinion of me though.  I assume he’s still alive somewhere, but I truly hope we never meet again.”

              “Why?”

              “Because if we do, I’m not confident he’ll be the same person.  I don’t think he’d show the same courtesy to me he would have when he left five years ago,” Silas said.  “We’re here.”

              Alice looked up at the tall apartment building and Silas led them inside.  There was an elevator just inside the main door.  They took it to avoid the main desk, which had extra security along with it. 

              Silas pressed the button for the 19
th
floor and they patiently waited. 

              “Dad?” Lilly asked.

              “Yes, Lilly, what is it?” Silas inquired sympathetically.

              “I’m tired.”

              “I know, sweetie.  We’re almost there, and then we can rest.”

              The soft bell rang as they reached the 19
th
floor.  Silas picked Lilly up and they walked down the hall until they reached the number Silas was looking for: 218.               He knocked on the door and waited for someone to answer.

              The door opened and a young woman was on the other side.  She was barely five feet tall and had dark brown hair that fell to her shoulders.  Her dark eyes were filled with surprise as she looked at her unexpected visitors.

              “Silas?”

              “Hello, Vanessa.”

              She quickly ushered them in and closed the door.

              Vanessa’s living room was covered in cardboard boxes.  The only furniture was two couches and a coffee table.  The three of them sat down on one of the couches.  Alice noticed that Silas seemed quite nervous, but she wasn’t sure why.

              “You have got some nerve coming back here, Knight.”

              Now she was sure why.

              “You offer me a 50/50 deal, I give you the goods, and then you split, and now you come back here?  I don’t know what you think you’re getting from me, but you’re not getting a thing!”

              “I took the goods and split?!”

Silas was pretty upset himself.

“You’re the one who set up the customer, and there was a sea of blue waiting for me!  I split because I value all four of my limbs.”

“And it never occurred to you to contact me?  To tell me what had happened?”

Silas gritted his teeth.

“I was caught the next week.”

“Prove it,” Vanessa said.

He cast a loathsome glare in her direction.  Although he didn’t want to, he accessed her mind.  He showed her everything: the capture, the waterboarding, and the dramatic rescue by Eli.  She shuddered when she saw the agents torturing him and was relieved when Silas decided she had seen enough and released his grip on her. 

Vanessa wiped a tear from her eye.

“I’m sorry.  I—I didn’t know.  No one should ever have to—”

“I know,” Silas said.  “But that’s not why we’re here.  We need your help.”

“What do you need?” Vanessa asked.

“A plane.”

She raised an eyebrow.

“We’re going to Australia and we need a plane to get there,” Alice said.

Vanessa was now looking at them like they were crazy.

“I was going to save that detail for later,” Silas said quietly to Alice.

Alice shrugged.

              “Are you going to help us or not?” she asked.

              Silas cringed at her abrasiveness.  He knew that was part of the package, but right now it made him want to crawl under a rock, especially since he could hear what Vanessa was thinking.

              Reluctantly, Vanessa pulled a cardboard box from one of the countless stacks and put it on the floor by the couch.  She pulled out a book and tossed it on Silas’ lap. 

              “I’m not flying you,” Vanessa said.

              “Vanessa—”

              “I said I’m not flying you,” she repeated.  “That book is a pilot’s manual for my back-up plane.  If you can fly it, you can take it.”

              “None of us can fly!” Alice insisted.

              “I can.”

              Vanessa, Silas, and Alice all looked at Lilly.  The pilot’s manual was no longer in Silas’ lap, it was in Lilly’s hands and she was pouring through it at an impressive rate.

              “Wh—what?” Silas asked.

              “I don’t forget,” Lilly replied without looking up.  “In an hour, I’ll be able to fly the plane.”

              Silas wanted to object.  He wanted to object heavily, but it made sense.  Lilly was highly advanced beyond her years and she was right: she didn’t forget.  Right now they needed more than anything to get to Australia, and his daughter was their best chance at doing so.

              “Alright, where is it?”

39.

              Teddy mumbled under his breath, continuing to count incessantly.  He closed his eyes and tried to block out his painful surroundings.  Wires ran from his head to various machines surrounding the chair in which he was sitting.  The machines ran to a large computer screen which took up a large portion of the wall.  The lab was full of anxious scientists anticipating an important visitor.

              “He’s coming,” one said to another.

              Within a few seconds, Agent Rodger Coleman came through the door.  His long hair was now pulled into a ponytail and his pristine royal blue uniform was without spot.   He surveyed the lab curiously, pacing with his hands joined behind his back.  He kept a close eye on the doctors and lab assistants, who worked very meticulously, afraid to make the slightest mistake in his presence. 

Rodge’s reputation for being a ruthless taskmaster had grown so that many of his underlings did not think of him as younger.  In fact, he suspected that many of them thought him much older than he was, despite his boyish appearance.

He slowly walked to Teddy, who continued his obsessive counting.  He rolled his head from side to side as he counted, oblivious to the fact that the feared Agent Rodger Coleman stood in front of him with his hands joined behind his back, glaring expectantly into his unresponsive eyes.  Still, Teddy continued his counting.  Today he was in the ten thousands. 

“13,452 … 13,453 … 13,454,” he muttered under his breath.

Teddy’s hair was growing in his imprisonment; he now looked like a young boy overdue for a haircut.  He  had some dark peach fuzz growing on his chin and his eyes were drooping from a lack of sleep.  The soldiers had kept him well fed, but they had otherwise left him largely uncared for, so that their message of hostility and coercion was not lost on him.  It didn’t matter much; Teddy just kept counting.  And counting.  And counting.

“What have you found?” Rodge asked.

An elderly balding doctor with white hair on the sides of his head answered.  He seemed less afraid than the others, but still held respect for Rodge’s position as his superior.  His tone did not quaver, but he held his head tilted down slightly as he spoke.  That was either respect, or a testament to the fact that the doctor was taller; Rodge couldn’t tell for sure.

“We ran a comprehensive CT scan, which didn’t turn up anything out of the ordinary.  He seems to have relatively normal brain function, although there was more activity than the normal human.  That’s normal for a rogue , however.  But, when we did a magnetoencephalography, the magnetic fields were unu—?”

“Whoa whoa whoa,, slow down.  Just tell me what you found.”

The doctor blinked slowly, frustrated at Rodge’s ignorance.  That aggravated him to no end, but he let it slide.  He was more worried about knowing Teddy’s limitations than the Ministry of Science’s arrogant stars.

The doctor turned to one of his lab assistants.

“Greg, power up the computer.”

While the assistant did some fiddling around on the computer, the doctor continued.

“There’s nothing in our results that indicates any kind of cognitive or developmental limitations,” the doctor said.  “My professional opinion is that all of his disabilities are psychological in nature.  What we did find, however, was an incredible manifestation of the boy’s unique properties.  Tell me, what do you know of the boy’s abilities?”

“His file said that he exhibits connections with others,” Rodge said.  “I had hoped he would exhibit more…comprehensive abilities of the same sort.”

The doctor smiled.  He looked at the computer screen, and Rodge did also.  What Rodge saw mesmerized him.  There was a map of the world, and across all six continents were lights.  Millions and millions of lights.  Rodge had a suspicion; a suspicion about what Teddy had been counting and what those lights represented.

“What is this?” he asked the doctor.

“Proof,” the doctor said. “You are looking at a GPS location for every rogue on the entire planet.”

Rodge smiled and, without a word, turned and left the room.  He stopped on his way out and looked at Rodriguez.

“It’s time to spring the trap.”

“Now, sir?” asked Rodriguez.

“Yes.  I have one half of the equation.  It’s time to bring in the other half.”

“But are you sure this will work sir?  After all, it would be a highly ambitious move on their part,” responded Rodriguez.

“Yes, I am sure,” Rodge said.  “I do not know them all, but I do know the Prime Minister’s daughter.  She will not be able to resist.  In all of her despair, she never lost hope for her mother.  She will come, if not for the lives of others, for her own.  Prepare your comrades, Rodriguez.  We will soon have visitors in the Capital.”