Day 28

Jamie wanted to speed up, Dana was visualizing scenarios by which we could approach, and I was just staring at the flickering lights. None of us said anything; there was nothing to say.

As we drove up the approach, we slowed again when the sight of several stopped troop transports presented themselves. Unfortunately, it being nighttime, they'd likely seen us for longer than we'd been able to see them. That meant the stealthy approach was out.

Among the food and water supplies we'd been given, Orin had also managed to sneak weapons into the van. Dana still had her shotgun and Jamie and I our pistols and stunners, but there were some heavy weaponry in otherwise-innocuous looking containers. If it came to it, we could put up quite a fight.

Someone, apparently, already had. It hadn't taken long until we got close enough to see that the transports were burnt out husks of machinery, long abandoned.

I was keeping alert for the presence of other minds, friendly or otherwise, and got nothing but a vague sense of conflict from the city ahead. We were close now, could see individual buildings afire, but none of the chaos I'd expect from a battle.

Bodies, though, I saw bodies. Mostly Troopers, but a few civilians as well. Though Glidewell had seemed impressed at the number of Troopers being sent to quash our rebellion, Haven had the numerical advantage. I was still surprised at the ratio of Trooper casualties to Haven's. Someone had turned the tide of battle. Judging from the lack of the “Nothing's here” vibe we'd gotten last time we drove this way, it hadn't happened soon enough.

Dana had spotted the body of a rebel who'd apparently been outfitted with a gun. She turned to Jamie suddenly. “Jamie, take us to my home.”

Jamie frowned. Looking in the direction our house had been was difficult; the whole neighborhood was on fire. “I don't think it's safe to-”

“To hell with safe! We're going to find John.” Dana replied.

There was a moment of tension there. Dana was operating on very little sleep and had endured a very taxing day already. She wasn't thinking straight, she knew she wasn't, but this one thing seemed very important. There had to be some stable point, some good news, and if something wasn't presenting itself she'd god-damn make it.

I spoke up. “Dana, this is John we're talking about. Wherever he is, he was sure as hell not going to stay in his house when the Troopers attacked. We're better off just finding what's left of Haven and asking there.”

Dana exhaled slowly. “I hate it that you're right, you know that? Of course you do. Let's just go.” She looked ahead, blanking her mind against me. I probably didn't want to know what she was thinking about me just then anyway.

Jamie drove further down the road, in some sort of horrible re-creation of the first time we'd came into Haven. Except this time there were no happy families in the windows, no welcoming lights, only fire and death.

<< IDENTIFY YOURSELF. <<

The van stopped; Jamie had done so without even thinking. For one terrifying moment I thought the mind was that of Bowers, that he was projecting himself into my waking life and the machine had finally broken me down. It wasn't Bowers, though. Just as each voice sounds different to ordinary people, every mind sounds different to me. This one sounded like a voice I knew; I'd never heard the mind itself before, however, and the words were tinged with something – some knowledge I didn't want to know, that nobody should have to know.

“Jamie Morris” Jamie said, even though there was nobody alive out on the streets to hear her. The compulsion overrode such considerations.
“Dana Merrick.” Dana said a moment afterward, her teeth grating. She could mind-blank herself against me, but not against whatever power was out there.
>> Derek Perkins >>

There was silence, both mental and real, for a few moments. Then, out of the flickering darkness, two identical shadows detached themselves. They walked toward us, but it was only until they came into range of the headlights that I recognized them.

“Robin?” I whispered, more to myself than to her.

<< DO NOT SPEAK HER NAME! <<

I almost recoiled from this; as it was the dizziness I'd been suppressing thus far came back with a vengeance and I needed to brace myself against the seat in front of me. Something had changed in a big way – though Robin had been telepathic before, as far as I knew she'd never been able to communicate with the rest of us that way. It'd only been between her and -

I stopped the train of thought, though of course Robin knew what I'd been thinking anyway. There were two of her here, two acting in unison. But there had been three Robins when I'd left, and they rarely acted together. Where, then, was the third? I suspected I knew. The powerful mind that had compelled Jamie to stop the van with no effort, the mind whose voice I knew but whose words were tinged with something horrible – that mind knew death. It had experienced a third of itself being extinguished, and even though she obviously wasn't trying, I could still sense a fraction of the feeling leaching into the thoughts she was directing at us. I got the distinct impression that the bodies around us had got more than just a fraction.

The driver's side door opened, and one of the Robins was there.

<< FOLLOW. <<

Jamie hopped out. Some part of her conscious mind knew what was going on and wanted to resist it on principle, but she seemed to have no choice. Dana was actively resisting the suggestion but it was still doing no good. Even though I am myself capable of sending suggestions and blocking others, this one had me. I could barely help myself as I opened up the back of the van and stepped out into the frigid desert night. I caught up with Jamie and Dana quickly as we followed the two shapes back into the shadows.

Robin led us into a building that appeared to have already burnt down for the most part. She never looked back to ensure we were still following, or even that we could see her. She simply stopped walking at some point, reached down, and pulled up a bit of the floor. At first I had the absurd thought that she was picking up debris, that she'd compel us all to help clean up the town. It wasn't until she began walking down the hidden stairway she'd opened the door to that I realized what was going on.

Dana, Jamie, and I followed the Robins down the stairway. There was no light in the metallic hallway, but Robin seemed to know her way and led without hesitation. Jamie and Dana followed because they'd been compelled to – the strength of Robin's command was such that they'd know where she was even without seeing her. As for me, I needed only follow the sense of death who marched at the head of our column.

It wasn't until we passed through a set of double doors into a lit room that I realized where we were – the same underground compound that Orin had given us a tour of long ago. Apparently there was more than one entrance, but that was to be expected. Anyone who didn't know their way around would be lost quickly, and there were more than enough closing steel doors and surveillance cameras to deter any invasion from that direction.

There were guards in this room, but they made no move to aim their weapons at us or even ask who we were. Clearly, if Robin hadn't approved of us we wouldn't be here; the soldiers seemed to be secondary or even completely unneeded. I suspected they remained at their posts out of a feeling of duty rather than true necessity.

Upon seeing the Robins return, one of the people who'd been seated at a desk waved off the people speaking to him and stood up. I recognized him nearly instantly – Gallow, master of Haven security. Apparently he'd been doing his job.

“Robi- sorry, I mean Val, Morana – good to see you back. Survivors?” He asked this before looking to us. The women I'd known as Robin and who were apparently now called Val and Morana didn't answer the question, knowing before he did that he'd recognize us.

“Wow, did you guys pick a time to come back!” he said to us, gesturing to an empty padded bench which had obviously seen far better days. “Sit down, you must be exhausted.”

I was, Jamie was, and I knew Dana was almost at her breaking point, but she wouldn't sit and so I was going to remain standing out of comaraderie.

Dana spoke up. “That's very kind of you, Master Sargent. But I need to know whether John's okay.” Her voice brooked no argument.

Gallow nodded and I could tell he felt embarrassed he hadn't brought up this point himself. He did begin thinking about it then, and I knew the news was bad.

“He was hurt in the fighting, trying to get Orin back.” Gallow stepped aside from the hallway in advance of Dana surging down it, then turned to follow her as we did. “I can lead you to the infirmary where we're keeping him, but it doesn't look good.”

Dana did not consent to being led, having apparently done enough following for the day, instead relying on Gallow speaking behind her, telling her which way led to the triage areas.

I found myself wondering if Robin would be working on patients, until I remembered that Robin was no more. The two remaining – Val and Morana – had sat down upon handing us over to Gallow and turned to face the entrance we'd come down, not speaking. I'd have to ask what had happened to her at some point, once I was far enough away to safely do so. Then again,judging from the carnage on the surface, there might be a safe distance.

We went through another set of double doors just like the others, and there he was. John was clearly the worse for the wear – bags of blood were set up above him, giving life to his system. His clothes were in tatters, and his own blood was seemingly everywhere. His left arm was wrapped in bandages, and I at first thought his right arm to be broken in some strange way, until I realized it had been amputated a length below the shoulder.

I could feel Dana's resolve cracking and knew then her intense need to be alone and grieve for John. I turned from the room and, fortunately, Gallow and Jamie followed me.

“What in the hell happened here?” I whispered to Gallow once we were out of earshot of John's room and hopefully of Robin's angry reprisal.

Gallow frowned. “Honestly? I hoped you'd be able to tell us. If it wasn't for that bizarre warning of yours we'd have been completely unprepared.”

It was my turn to feel guilty. “That wasn't a warning, that was a mistake on my part. It's what got the Troopers attention.”

Gallow appeared to accept this information. He didn't look happy, but he didn't seem ready to blame me – in his mind, I was still responsible for giving them whatever advance warning I had. Instead, he began his account.

“Orin was the one who told us. Said he'd seen you trying to communicate something. I don't know how that's even possible, but I've never really understood how you mutants work anyway – no offense.” he smiled wryly at this, knowing that a little offense was the least of our worries. “Anyway, he had me prepare everything from down here, coordinate and such.”

“It didn't take long for a flyby to hit with a sleep-bomb. If I hadn't got stims out to everyone who'd intended to fight, that'd be it for us. Sure, I've still got the anti-sleep chip in my head, but the number of Troopers who've joined the light over the years is like a dozen, tops. So when the sleep bomb hit, everyone able to hit their stim and then we hid, made to look like there wasn't anything here.”

“It didn't work. Orin was staying aboveground, because he thought you might try to contact him again. He didn't even want to move from the spot it'd originally happened, at first, but we got him and Robin – one of the Robins, the one the twins out there call Robin now – we got them into a house and made it somewhat defensible. I ran things from down here as well I could, we got our birds in the air and tried to give them a hell of a fight.” He laughed at this

“They didn't get the chance to drop another sleeper; our choppers were in charge of the skies pretty quick. I'll tell you one thing, they did not expect us to have air power. If they'd brought a dozen less people we'd have had it sewn up. But even with the copters, they still had better eqipment.”

He sighed, his brief flash of good mood at the thought of their unexpected air superiority gone as he related the rest. “I think they had a telepath on their roster, it's the only thing that made sense. Because a group of their special forces goon went right to the house Orin was holed up in, and they kidnapped him. Robin... she was shot.”

“All hell broke loose. They got away with Orin, that's for sure, but that's only because it took a few minutes for Val and Morana to get going. I don't pretend to understand it, but they suffered when their sister died. Since then they haven't been Robin, won't let anyone call them that. Adopted those two names and haven't said much of anything except when you got here.”

“What did she do?” Jamie said, not wanting to actually speak Robin's name.

Gallow shook his head. “The Robin who was down here with me organizing the whole thing, the one who calls herself Val now, she was just screaming for a few minutes. Then she stood up, didn't say a word, just left. Walked right out the front, even though there were Troopers on the other side. I couldn't follow, you know? I had a post and a duty and the only other person helping me had just freaked out. From what I'm told, she opened that door to the outside, and before the troopers could even think to shoot her, they were dead. Just like that. She took the death of her sister and forced it back on them, is the best I can make of it.”

There was a pause while everyone pondered what had happened. Gallow looked at me sharply.

“You say you're to blame for this?”

I opened up my mouth to say something, but was spared the need to.

“It was not his doing.” The Robin who called herself Morana had entered the hallway at some point. Her tone was emotionless, and she didn't even look at me when she said this, gazing intently instead at Gallow.

Gallow was unnerved, but also unmoved. “Still, I'd like to hear him explain it.”

“We found a device there, an amplifier for my talents. I tried to contact Orin with it, and that was the warning he got. It wasn't me trying to warn him, though, it was just me trying to communicate. The next place I went was to the Meadows, to find out if they had any telepaths with them.”

Gallow's mouth twitched in what would have been a wry smile if he weren't so tired. “I take it you found a few.”

“Just one. Bowers, as it happens. He had a fancier device than me. Stole the location of this place from her” I gestured to John's room, where I could still feel Dana's mourning emanating from. “I was worried he'd use the amplifier on the people here to his advantage.”

Morana laughed. “He dared not touch our minds when we were one. We'd have shown him death. This amplifier would not make him immune, I think, rather the reverse.” Her laughter was bitter, her smile venomous, and her mind a roiling ocean of pain. I couldn't imagine what losing Robin had done to them as a whole, but I was beginning to get a clue.

“Bowers?” Gallow seemed completely surprised. “I didn't know his past; when I was in the service he'd just kinda appeared out of nowhere. Big general-type, had a desk job, but nobody I knew had ever served under him. Guess they just made up a history for his promotion.”

“Now what?” Jamie asked after an awkward silence.

Gallow opened up his mouth to say how we were welcome to stay and reconstruct, our information about the amplifier was no doubt quite useful, we were welcome in Haven, and other such platitudes, but he was interrupted when Val turned around a corner in the hallway and stood next to our sister.

“I will tell you what happens next.” she said.

Morana looked at me piercingly. “You know where this Bowers is?” I could only nod in reply; even if I couldn't pinpoint his location in his underground laboratory, his mind was all over Meadows. It'd be impossible for him to hide himself without disconnecting from the amplifier, and doing that would put him and the entire city at a disadvantage I didn't think he'd want.

Val continued once Morana had verified I could take them where they wanted to go. “I will leave this city – with my sister, if she will come with me.”

“I will.” Morana said stonily.

Val nodded. “We will leave this city, and we will journey south to the Meadows. We will find Orin, and we will set him free. Then we will bring a death to the city like none that has ever been known.”

Previous - Next

Full Post...