Day 29

10: Fate

“I've been able to read minds all my life, I think. It's hard to tell – when I had young I always pretended I had the ability, and then once I got older I actually did have it. I never remember exactly when it changed from fantasy to reality. One thing's sure, I'm different. Man of science that I am, I've volunteered for a study. Katie knows this means I'll be gone for a while, but like I said, it's for everyone's good.”

“I chose the name Valdis.” Val said to me.

Morana spoke up. “And I, Morana.”

Val took back over. “And as Robin is the one you knew before, the unity of all of us, it is after her that we name our dead sister.”

The van had never been more crowded. The seats were designed for five; two in front and three in the back, with room for an injured comrade in the empty rear. There had likely been additional seats in the back at some point, but they'd long since been removed.

There were five of us. Val and Morana were nominally the leaders of this expedition, but as Robin had never learned to drive they were relying on us. I came because they had decided they needed me, though for talents of their power they'd likely to be able to locate Bowers a lot more simply than I could. They hadn't seemed to make staying behind an option, however.

Staying behind wasn't an option for anyone, considering. Though all of us had been given time to rest, we'd not used it by the time Gallow had ordered a general evacuation of Haven. The Troopers knew its location, and it was only a matter of time before they returned. Best to disperse to safehouses. Apparently the only reason they'd stuck around as long as they had was the difficulty in deciding where to put an entire city's worth of people.

Val and Morana had demanded our van for their suicide mission to the Meadows. They demanded my presence as well. I then asked to bring Jamie along. She wanted to come with me, that much I knew, and I was wracked with Dana's pain upon seeing her loved one maimed upon her return. I didn't want that to happen to me, even though this mission would likely be more dangerous.

Later, while Gallow was handing out safehouse assignments, Dana had apparently asked the sisters whether she could come along. I didn't have to peer into her mind to know why, either: John's condition was extremely unlikely to ever get better. At best, he'd be in a coma until he died. She carried in her heart a small fraction of the Death that Val and Morana did, and was no less eager to share it with others.

Gallow himself had offered to come with us and help get Orin back, but I turned him down because I knew his heart wasn't in it. He wanted to be here, to help evacuate the town and fight off any reinforcements that might appear. Foremost, though, he wanted to be rid of Morana and Valdis. Their presence was demoralizing, to say the least.

It had remained so. At first, they'd remained quiet, sitting in the back of the van and even, at one point, both falling asleep. When we'd made it to the trooper checkpoint we'd visited twice before and saw Glidewell come out, I didn't know what to think. He'd seen us twice now, and perhaps had heard rumors of the slaughter in the mountains. If he knew, or even suspected we'd been involved, we were as good as dead before we even got close to our destination. If not, we might be able to bluff our way through a third time.

Jamie, driving at the time, had rolled down the window and Glidewell had walked up, and I could tell his mood was fine – he didn't suspect a thing, as usual. I was beginning to think we might have a hope after all.

“Hey, didn't think I'd see you guys so soon, they send you back out for supplies?” he'd even been cheerful, an emotion which seemed almost foreign at this point. “Did they stitch up your-” his eyes widened as he caught sight of the sisters in the back. “Who the hell are-”

His eyes rolled up into his head, he twitched, then he hit the ground like a wet sack of flour. Jamie visibly recoiled from the window. “Holy shit!”

“I suggest we drive.” Val said. It had been her first utterance since we'd begun the drive.

“Is he dead?” Jamie said, making no indication that she was planning to start the vehicle up.

“He meant us no harm.” Morana explained, “and so we have spared him. Leave before others notice, however, or we will be forced to kill.”

That had been about all the motivation Jamie needed. Careful not to hit the unmoving body of the fallen Trooper, she maneuvered the van onto the highway. As she did so, I couldn't help but to think it would be the last time.

She'd been more talkative since that point, but nonetheless seemed to have a suppressive effect on everyone. The trip was going to be a long one; we weren't even likely to get to the Meadows that day. Even given perfect conditions, the fastest road still meandered all over the place. We could manage to hit Carson before we got to Meadows, and the former wasn't even close to our starting point. The other problem was that we were not under perfect conditions. Val and Morana had been insistent upon leaving as soon as possible; the only reason we hadn't left the night they'd revealed their plan had been pure exhaustion on all our parts. This meant we could get stopped by Trooper patrols, which would no doubt be stepped up after the attack, and we'd have to skirt Carson. The map made this look straightforward, but I doubted that'd be the case.

Dana and Jamie and I switched off driving. Of the three of us, only Dana had managed to get a fair amount of sleep the night before, and not by much. We slept for the most part.

The highways were surprisingly busy. Trooper transports were traveling in all directions, but we weren't stopped once – I got a vague impression from a passing Trooper patrol car at one point that our vehicle was on the highway for a reason, and given the stepped-up security posture, we wouldn't be on the highway if we weren't supposed to be. Obviously nobody had discovered Glidewell yet, or if they had they hadn't connected it to us.

Val and Morana seemed to only want to talk to me. I supposed she felt she knew me better because she'd known of my father. I tried to be as polite as I could.

“Our names mean 'death'.” one of them said at one point. I couldn't decide if that was creepy or just cliché, but I wasn't going to say either out loud and I had to try very hard to keep it from my thoughts.

At another point, shortly before we stopped on the side of the road to sleep for the night, I'd seen them talking to each other.

“Should we, then, embrace death once this is done with?” Val was asking.

Morana shrugged. “I think healing will come in time. Others have faced death of loved ones, and continue to live. I had thought we would find solace in the life of the hermit for a time.”

Val pondered this. “If it is what you wish. I will live for your sake, then, and we will see if such a mortal wound as ours can heal.” Her voice indicated that she didn't think this to be very likely, but she was willing to try for Morana's sake.

I'd been driving, and Dana sleeping already, but Jamie had apparently been emboldened enough to talk to them. “So you don't... think to each other anymore?” she asked.

I could tell that she immediately regretted asking the question, but nonetheless the sisters answered. Val spoke up first, saying “We can become one, like we were before. But it hurts.”

Morana was nodding. “When we are one, we feel the death of our sister more keenly than at other times. Whenever we use our minds to speak, she seems to speak with us. It is more than we can endure, and why I was hoping to leave society once our task is complete.”

We slept, and I got my first uninterrupted night of sleep in days. I could tell even the sisters were exhausted, and if it hadn't been for fear that we'd be discovered at the side of the road by some overly inquisitive Trooper patrol, I'm sure we would have slept much longer. As it was we got up later than we'd intended to.

Once past Carson, we began seeing more and more Troopers. At one point, there was a roadblock and we were ordered to turn back. The sisters put everyone there to sleep as well, suddenly and effectively. However the chips in the Troopers' heads had been designed, they clearly weren't made with whatever Val and Morana were projecting in mind.

Jets flew overhead, and though none had of yet seemed to show an interest in us, I remained wary nonetheless. If Bowers learned our location and ordered an aerial strike, the pilot could likely drop whatever ordnance he had from a height beyond our protective telepaths' range, and that'd be it for us. I wondered if that'd be our fate once we arrived.

“We can keep ourselves hidden.” Morana said scornfully in reply to my thoughts. Clearly the thought of standing out in such a way to get us spotted was offensive to her.

“When we are in the city itself, they will not be able to stand against us, as they will have no way of killing us both at once that we cannot first neutralize. Should one of us die, the other will kill all things that yet live.” Val said with a vague smile on her face.

Morana frowned. “You take too much delight in this. Do not forget, Orin is there somewhere. We must be selective in who we kill.”

“If it's at all possible,” Jamie said from the driver's seat, “I'd like not to die too.”

The sisters seemed to contemplate this for longer than I would have thought necessary. Finally Val answered. “If at all possible, we will try to spare your life.”

It was less than reassuring.

Dana woke up. “How far to Vegas?”

I glanced at the map. “Where?”

She rolled her eyes. “Dear God, Derek, didn't you take a history class?” she sighed in mock outrage. “Kids these days, and I suppose Trooper revisionist history doesn't help either. The Meadows, Derek, how far to the Meadows.”

I looked back at the map, chagrined to discover it was in fact old enough to have Vegas in the place I'd expected the Meadows to be. “Looks like we're an hour out, tops.”

Dana closed her eyes. “Wake me when we're there.”

Nobody said much of anything for the remaining hour, save Val who spoke up minutes before we were stopped.

“He knows we're here.” she said quietly. “And he's scared.” she smiled wickedly.

Bowers, of course. I couldn't feel his mind myself, but I trusted Val's intuition. In fact, it wasn't long until we ran into a roadblock. Unlike the others, this wasn't just men or easily movable flashing lights – Trooper patrol cars were placed front to back across the highway, and almost immediately behind them were the much heavier transports. We wouldn't be able to simply drive through as we had before. Between the two rows of vehicles were a dozen heavily armored, helmeted Troopers, all aiming weapons our way. One with a megaphone spoke up as soon as Jamie had stopped the van.

“Surrender immediately or be-” was as far as he got before he and everyone around him died a twitching death.

Dana and Jamie had been effected, I could tell, but I was too busy trying not to retch the contents of my own stomach up to know much more than that. Unlike them, I'd felt it for the briefest of seconds – the sensation of Val and Morana's combination, the sudden feeling that there was a third being there, one of decay and hate and pain. Knowing that the memory of their sister's death was so raw, so ingrained in the two survivors was frightening to me in ways I couldn't even begin to comprehend. I understood now why Val had been so casually discussing suicide; they lived with death every moment they were awake.

“We will have to walk now.” Morana said matter-of-factly, as though what they had done had been little more than an afterthought.

It took a while to leave the van. Dana and Jamie and I all made a show of arming ourselves even though I could tell our two guests thought this was a waste of time. The reality was, we were all having second thoughts. It had been one thing to hear about what the sisters had done during the fight, and having them act as living super-stunners hadn't really bothered us once we realized they weren't killing, but to see a dozen lives snuffed out before our eyes with no effort whatsoever, it was humbling. Not for the first time, I found myself wondering what I was doing here.

Eventually we started walking toward town. We were in the abandoned suburbs now, and it was going to take the better part of a half hour just to cover the remaining distance, let alone find wherever the lab was hidden.

Val seemed to have this eventuality covered. After some walking, she stopped and pointed to a building in the distance.

“There,” she said to me. “they've set up a sniper on the fourth floor of that office building. He's not even aiming at us yet, hasn't yet set up his weapon. He does not know of the failure of the roadblock. Can you feel his mind?”

I tried and was rewarded with nothing. Val and Morana were either blanking their minds or simply not thinking much of anything, but even with that there was too much of Dana and Jamie's background thoughts for me to read that far away. I shook my head.

“We have a few minutes. He will no doubt notice us soon.” Val said, hurrying the pace and heading in the direction she'd indicated.

Eventually I could feel it – the sniper was alternately bored and stressed. He'd been reassured until just recently, when the usual sense of feeling and purpose he'd had while on duty had fled with no explanation. I knew it to be Bowers pulling his mind's effects away from the sisters' range, but the sharpshooter had no clue. He just knew he wanted this assignment to be over with, and he also knew there was more to it than just shooting at someone.

>> Come out >>

I sent the suggestion as subtly as I could under the circumstances. We were still perhaps a block away, and Dana had insisted we stand behind cover so that he couldn't spot us, but it made communication difficult; I was at about the extent of my range.

Why the hell not, he thought. The feeling of well-being had gone, so why not get it back by artificial means? He'd given up smoking years ago, having found new meaning in his job, but right now that didn't seem as important. He needed a cigarette.

I latched onto this last feeling and amplified it as much as I dared. By the time he stepped out of a fire exit on the side of the building, he'd already lit up.

The five of us came around the corner simultaneously, and I could tell he'd spotted us then.

>> Gun's Burning >>

I sent the thought before he even reached for it, but for a soldier like him it was reflex to grab his sidearm. He touched it and had it partially drawn before my thought was even completed, but it got to him before he could aim. He shrieked and threw it aside, and then Dana had him pinned to the wall with a knife at his throat.

“Do you know who we are?” she said through grit teeth.

“My targets?” the sniper replied uncertainly. It was the only answer that made sense to him, but he wasn't at all sure it was the answer she wanted.

“That's right. And do you know why?”

The sharpshooter started to shake his head, but thought better of it given there was a very sharp implement very close to it. Instead, he managed a choked “No.”

Dana pointed back to Morana and Val with the weaponless hand. “Because those two can kill every man, woman, and child in this city with just a thought. Your buddies at the roadblock? They're dead. If you don't want that to happen to you, you're going to help us out.”

He didn't want to believe Dana. He knew about the existence of the roadblock, though, knew he was backup. He'd been expecting a whole Rebel formation of some sort, though, not just five people. Either we were unrelated to the supposed Rebel attack, or we were the entirety of it. If the latter, then we couldn't be lying about the sisters. He grudgingly came to the conclusion just as Dana was starting to lose patience.

“You going to help us?” she asked.

“Yeah, fine.” the man said. He didn't need this, he finally decided. He had become vaguely aware at this point that he'd been abandoned by his higher-ups, though he was unaware of the fact that this was literally the case. “What do you want?”

“The lab.” Val spoke up. “He will lead us to the lab.”

“Lab? What do you-” he seemed vaguely confused until Dana gave him a quick non-fatal jab. “Agh! No, please, I don't know about any lab!”

“There's an underground base here somewhere.” I said. I knew it to be the case; if I concentrated I could almost feel Bowers' amplified presence below the ground.

“Oh, the base!” he said, relieved that he was to be some use as a hostage after all. “I can take you there.”

Dana backed away from him, sheathing her knife in one fluid movement. “Do that. Just know that if you even think of running away, our two friends will hemorrhage your brain faster than you'll know.”

Val scowled. “That is not how he will die.” She looked directly at the prisoner. “It will be far more painful.”

Morana frowned and followed us as we left.

Damien – a patch on his uniform had at least informed us as to the sniper's last name – led us through the back streets. He explained that he wasn't the last line of defense, or even the only sniper, but this area was relatively poorly covered. He'd be missed in about fifteen minutes if he didn't radio in, unless we trusted him enough to let him do so. He promised not to alert security but nobody was buying it, not even me. I could tell he was eager to not get killed – he seemed to fear our guns more than any ability of Val or Moran – but I couldn't tell how loyal he still remained to the regime here.

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