******Jack******
“Now, Diego,” I said my smile becoming decidedly wicked, “you seem to know enough about me to be a touch more concerned about your welfare than the rest of these fellows,” I said motioning to the left at the people I had already passed and rejected. “Having a healthy amount of fear of me is always good, especially if you are trying to hide something. Our mutual friend here believes you are as oblivious to the purpose of this compound as she is, ” I said, ignoring the stab of annoyance that shot across the link at me, “but we know better, don’t we Diego?” I asked, watching him fidget.
“I don’t know anything for certain. I was never able to find any proof hombre! I couldn’t go around asking anyone about it, that’s how people disappear amigo. They were just theories, a way to occupy my mind with something out here,” he fired off nervously, his Latino accent getting heavier as he glanced back and forth between Sarah and me.
“Ah, but now your theories seem to be substantiated haven’t they?” I asked.
He nodded nervously, looking at me again, “Yes, Sir.”
“Relax kid, your thoughts are your own, I’m just very observant,” I said. The breath he let out at my words was immediately sucked back in suspicion, and I laughed again in real humor. “You can relax too, Sarah, I promise I won’t throw him out of the plane.” I shot her a grin over my shoulder letting her know I had caught her last thought as I pulled myself out of her memory. *So long as you promise not to experiment while we are linked like this without my guidance, you know, since I can’t be incapacitated like that at the wrong time.*
*Oh, you mean now that you know I can play your game too?* she shot back defiantly, forcing a chuckle out of me. This little puppy certainly has a bark. The confusion raised in her by the imagery of that thought increased my mirth. It gave me the idea to use unfamiliar imagery to keep her guessing.
*I will need that assurance, Sarah,* I thought back seriously, *I can’t be worrying about having to forcibly break the link if you make a mess of something when a distraction could be fatal.* I turned to look back at her to judge her reaction.
She narrowed her eyes and seemed to be studying me closely, so I held my thoughts close not letting anything slip through the link. *I won’t experiment at inopportune times,* she finally responded after a few seconds. That would have to do for now I thought, as her next thought whispered across the link. I could tell she was trying to hold it back from me, but she was still new to this kind of exercise of her abilities. I concentrated a moment and met the thought halfway across the link to catch it before she could hide it away. *But I will not stop doing what I already can.* The vehemence behind the thought startled a laugh out of me as another old memory resurfaced. Must be the day for old memories I guessed as I peeked in at a similar green gaze.
I quickly stepped out of the memory, smiling but not ready to get caught up in it. I was about to file it away for later perusal, when I thought better of it. Sarah could benefit from the lesson as well. I pushed the memory along the link to her mind, not a trap to pull her in and occupy her this time, but several lessons in one. I pulled back across the link leaving her to study it.
*What is it?* she asked, *Besides a memory,* she said, stating the obvious.
I chuckled again and winked at her *You’re learning. Call it a teaching aid, several lessons wrapped up in one.* A thought occurred to me, *You don’t happen to know French do you? No? Damn, that’s a tricky one. Give me a minute,* I told her and went back into the memory. It is tricky, I thought to myself as the memory began replaying. You had to know both translations of everything going on, then tie that knowledge into the memory so it overlay the original translation seamlessly. It took a few moments, but it came back to me quickly with the memory. Jehanne used to complain that she couldn’t understand my memories in English so I developed this to solve the problem. It was just a matter of reversing the process with Sarah.
I stepped out again as the green-eyed woman in the memory charged, sword raised, and a determined look on her face. I focused on the woman staring at me in the present, *You’ll be able to understand the words at least. What you learn from this is entirely up to you. Just… try not to dive right in. Study the structure of it so you can recreate something similar. Look for that little extra I had to put in there for you to understand.*
*You’re just trying to keep me occupied,* she glared at me, *Again.*
*You are correct, of course, but I had a job to do when I got here and it’s still not done. So if you will excuse me,* I sent, as I turned back around to Diego, *I have work to do.*
Diego was still a few meters away, a confused look on his face. He hadn’t been a party to our silent exchange and still had no idea what was happening. Time to give some direction, concentrating for a moment, I reached out with a thought and grabbed him by the shirt, pulling him lurching forward. He looked terrified when I stopped him in front of me. I pulled out my largest knife, almost a machete really, and gave it a little twirl in my hand as I walked around to his back.
I grabbed his bound wrists with my free hand, leaning in close so Sarah wouldn’t hear, she would only get a sense of menace from my thoughts. “I promised her I wouldn’t throw you out of the plane, and I won’t, but if she isn’t on that plane when I need her to be, decades from now when I finally let you die, you will wish I hadn’t made that promise.” I flicked my wrist and sliced through the hard plastic bindings with the knife. “Comprehende amigo?” I said louder, walking back around him.
“Ci, hombre, ci.” He said, cautiously rubbing his wrists in front of him.
“Good,” I told him, "I’m not an evil man, Diego. Harsh, maybe, but fair. Harm one of my people and you hurt us all. I cannot allow any offenses to go unpunished no matter how slight. Since you are a friend to my new *and old.* friend, I will give you a chance to make up your own mind about me." I gave him a nudge toward Sarah, "There should be some crates behind the plane that my men should have unloaded, you can work through that lesson there."
******Sarah******
Fuming I walked away towards the back of the cargo plane. Sure enough there were stacks of crates and boxes littering the floor behind the plane. Some were obviously set up like rudimentary benches and tables for the officers and soldiers to use. I looked back just as Jack approached a shaken group of shrinks followed by a team of heavily armed bruisers. As he settled to a stop he rolled his shoulders and a pair of midnight black wings erupted from his shoulder blades. A rolling wave of menace tore across the link towards me, stopping suddenly just short of my mental barrier.
An unconscious shiver rippled through me at the depth of his fury. Thankful I wasn’t the target, I took a seat at one of the crate-benches. Focusing my thoughts inward, I felt my way around the foreign bubble in my head. The first thing I noticed was a whisper thin strand that spiraled back down the link. As I pressed a little further, I saw a second layer that meshed with the first and melded with it as it twisted into the strand. Layer upon layer of midnight blue mystery wrapped around a puzzle. He did say it was several lessons in one, maybe this second layer is the something extra he had to put in so I could understand the language.
Still thinking about the way the two layers meshed, I plunged all the way into the memory. Once again it was as if I were seeing through his eyes and gripping the wooden shaft of some sort of polearm. Three feet of it was a wicked looking medieval blade. All of that detail was quickly brushed aside as a sword wielding woman burst out of the large pavilion in front of me, anger written across her face. The change was so subtle I barely noticed, but Jack shifted our stance slightly readjusting our center of gravity as an edge of wariness colored his thoughts.
The young woman shouted “You dare show your face to me after so long?” as she charged us. The words I heard were in English, but the movements her lips made did not match the sounds. Ah well, I guess nobody can be perfect. As she made her attack, Jack stepped to the side of the blade and knocked it to her offhand side with a jarring strike from the butt of his weapon, forcing her to turn with it or lose her hold on the sword. Before she could recover fully, he tapped her on the shoulder with the flat of the blade and took two steps back, settling back into that deceptively relaxed stance.
“If you’re going to try swinging a sword like a soldier, you better learn how to do it properly. That’s two lives you owe me now Jehanna.” Jack said.
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“You show up on the eve of my army’s first great battle after seven years and make demands of me!?” she asked incredulously, shocked out of her blind fury.
“No Jehanna,” he said, “merely reminding you of a debt. Now attack me again.” He said in a calm but commanding tone.
The memory went on with Jack instructing her on how to really use the blade she held. I found the topic boring, I mean who uses a sword these days? So I started looking at the layers of the bubble again, fascinated by the way the two meshed together. There was no point in which the two layers were separate, they existed in equal amount throughout. If he could do that to change the whole structure of a memory like that, maybe I could do the same. I wonder if I could somehow create a third layer that muted the English and let the French come through. Just as the thought crossed my mind, the language Jack was speaking shifted mid-sentence as the English dropped out.
After a few phrases and remarks went back and forth in French, I refocused on the walls of the bubble. Exactly as I had subconsciously pictured it was a third, unmistakable layer with a scarlet hue. There was one small flaw in the third layer which seemed to correspond with where the strand that seemed to stretch outside my own mental barriers entered the bubble inside my mind. Upon closer inspection, the hole turned out to be a tiny spiral tube that stretched across the link.
Curious, I decided to see where the tube went. Pushing through the hole, I almost immediately felt the threshold of my personal barriers. Well, in for a penny, in for a dollar, I thought, and crossed the line.
******Jack******
The fear rolling off the bastards being herded into the hangar by Charlie Squad was nauseating. These were the doctors and scientists responsible for the atrocities committed here, and from the reports I’ve read, they’ve got a very good reason to fear. One man in particular was doing his best to hide amongst the offal being led in, but the taste of his thoughts was as familiar to me as the back of the hand he once took from me. I gave the fury boiling up inside of me free reign as I stepped up to the group, letting my wings burst out of my back.
“Dr. Chekov, what a pleasant surprise,” I drawled, “I had heard you’d left Russia. Why am I not surprised to see you here amongst this esteemed crowd of butchers?” The man in question twitched in response to my voice as though it had struck a physical blow.
“My God,” he said quietly, “you… you haven’t aged a day! What… what are you?”
“I’ve been called the Angel of Vengeance, the God of Justice, the Lord’s Shadow, a Witch’s Familiar, a Demon of Death and many like titles. In other words, I’m your worst fucking nightmare.” The man, who looked to be in his late sixties took a fearful step back. He tried to take another step, but ran into the imposing chest of a grinning platoon sergeant.
“Chekov is it,” Sergeant Chiang said, grinning madly. “The General there has been looking for you for a looong time now. I suppose it’s been thirty some years or so, right boss?” he said glancing up at me.
“41 years, Chiang. You know that as well as I do.” I said, not taking my eyes from the “Doctor” as he stepped as fearfully away from him as he had from me, finally recognizing him as one of his other “patients”. “I wonder Chekov, if I were to cut off your hand, will it grow back?”
“Or your balls.” Chiang said in a menacing growl as he produced a wicked looking blade from his belt.
“Now now Chiang. You know what Michael has in mind here. You know we don’t have access to the proper facilities for such scientific research… here.” I said. “Get him secured in the plane. The good Doctor here is going for a ride with us. There is oh so much we can learn from him.” Looking out over the rest of my people, and the shape they were in, “The rest of his sycophants too!” I said nodding to the rest of the squad.
The men herded the group of doctors under extreme threat with a decided lack of violence. As angry as the men were for what had been done to their brothers’ and sisters, their discipline was stronger, always taking the higher moral ground that was in such short supply in the world these days. The thought struck a chord of sadness in me at the descent mankind had made after the centuries long war had been made public.
It wasn’t a war against a country or nation, nor was it one on a race or an idea. It was a war against an entire species that had appeared at the turn of the millennium, my species. We called it evolution, they called it contamination.
As I turned back to the men lined up along the wall, I felt the presence of Sarah right at the edge of my mental barriers, just on the inside of them. It was impossible for someone to breach my barriers without me knowing immediately, well, impossible for anyone but her apparently. I saw immediately how she had done it, but never in a thousand years, literally, had I even conceived of the possibility.
*You’ve been looking for him for 41 years?* I heard in my head, *But… you’re my age! We haven’t been alive for 41 years!*
*Ah fuck. You heard all of that? Yes, I’ve been looking for him for a long time, ever since he cut off my hand for “science”. I know it sounds crazy, but today I celebrated my first millennium. That’s… part of the story I promised you.* I thought back at her, trying my best to blunt the edges of the memories rising to engulf her presence in my mind.
******Sarah******
The weight of the memories rising up to the surface of his thoughts began dragging at the part of me inside his barriers. *You need to go back before you get sucked in. It’s a long story and you don’t have the energy to see it through in one sitting.* he finished.
A thin bubble, like the one around the memory still floating around in my head, appeared between the rising memories, relieving the pressure pulling me down and giving me a moment to think clearly. Taking his advice and the breather he was giving me, I pulled my awareness back along the tube connecting us, leaving a last thought behind for him.
*I need to hear some of that story now, if only to understand why you are actually here.*
As I returned to the memory of the young woman, Jack was following her into the pavilion she had emerged from. The moment Jack pushed through the entrance, the memory ended and kicked me out. Opening my eyes, I saw Diego lounging on the other side of the table, watching everything. He suddenly stiffened and stared at something over my shoulder. Turning in my seat, I saw a very frightened group of doctors being marched into the cargo plane by the squad I had seen through Jack’s eyes.
I felt the fear and guilt rolling off of the white coats so forcefully, I swayed on my makeshift seat. The hope and relief of the ragged men and women limping along behind the squad sent another tremor through me as they boarded the plane that would take them away from a nightmare.
The emotions battering at my barriers were so intense I didn’t notice his presence until he spoke softly. “We just want to live our lives in peace, but until mankind no longer fears what it doesn’t understand, we are doomed for a fight for our very existence.”
“Who are you? What are you?” I asked dumbly.
“We, and that includes you mon chéri, have dubbed ourselves Homo Supremis. The next step along the evolutionary ladder, born of mankind, yet no longer a part of it.” he ended bitterly. “My name, as your friend Diego here told you, is Jack. You may have known me as Caleb, once upon a time, but for all intents and purposes, I have been Jack L’Ombres for nine hundred and seventy-six years, and the de facto leader of our people for the past three hundred of those years.” He sat down next to Diego across the makeshift table from me.
“Fuck me, hombres. A thousand years? How are you sane?” Diego blurted, and I couldn’t blame him for saying what I was thinking.
Grinning mischievously, he replied “Who says I am? The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome. Well, I’ve been fighting the war for equality for nearly a thousand years, expecting mankind to accept the truth that is dangling right before their eyes, and yet here we are. There are those among us who have cracked under the weight of their years and the pain of watching loved ones grow old and die. We are not unique in that, all creatures produce broken members. It is the prerogative of their societal structure and support system to either hold them up as functional members of society or not. It’s what separates us from the animals.”
“Let me guess, you’re an expert in sociology too, aren’t you?” I said with a bitter sarcasm that startled even me. He flashed a brief, sad smile at me, and I immediately regretted the acid in my tone. “What do you mean we are the “next step” in evolution?” I continued apologetically. The smile he produced at that was much warmer and far too amused at my abrupt 180. The flash of embarrassed anger that arose at his amusement slipped free of the steel cage I had built around my emotions, and his smile devolved into that infuriating grin of his as he caught it. A moment later, the grin disappeared as I heard his voice in my head.
*I apologize for my amusement; it has been a long time since I have evoked embarrassment with as little as a sad smile. It’s… refreshing. * “In 2000 AD,” he said aloud, adding *Sorry, lecture mode* “something in mankind’s biological clock ticked over and triggered a mass genetic mutation in children born after 2000. At first only .1% of births were affected but the numbers our analysts are projecting are constantly changing, since the mutation is dormant and completely undetectable until a person undergoes what we have been calling a second puberty phase. It occurs at a different time in each person’s life much like the puberty we undergo as children, and the earliest case we have record of happened when the person was 17. Therefore, we only have seven tentative years of viable data. We won’t even know if our children will bear the same genetic mutation until they reach their second puberty. We’re still in the first generation of mutation and there is no saying what our future may hold, so we fight to ensure that we survive to find out.” He looked at me frankly and shrugged, standing up again. “Enough lecture for now, Michael just got here and we are leaving.”
As he stood up, I looked around and saw the people who were lined up along the side of the hangar being led to a second plane on the tarmac. The whole ordeal, from the moment the explosions rocked the compound till now, took place in less than an hour but it felt like hours had passed. It seemed as if the sun should be high in the sky, instead it was still barely above the horizon. I followed Jack up the loading ramp with Diego nervously bringing up the rear. Of all the people assigned to the compound, it seemed as if he and I were the only ones left unfettered, and Diego seemed acutely aware that his liberty was only because of his association with me.