PILLARS OF LIGHT AND FIRE: THE COMPLETE SERIES, page 48
Richard and his team had modified Gram, and other acquired Avallach focal rings, altering the matrix shape so that it accepted a different brain-wave pattern. Thus Nornian was born. Owen had been practicing with the rings for a month now, and manifesting the waveblade was becoming easier with each test. But never before had he felt—then the force grabbed his mind again, so strong; he let go and Nornian winked out. It was gone and he fell to his knees, panting. Stupid, he told himself. It wasn’t the gauntlet. It was the manifest power. What was it and why now?
“Don’t break my equipment,” Richard complained, watching a piece of gear collapse with the table. “Are you okay? You look like you shat a cactus. Or cacti.”
Owen waved him away and got up. “We have plenty more gear.” One effect of manifesting was the hyper clarity it brought to Owen—colors were brighter, shapes were sharper, the air felt more like water on his skin, and sounds were crisp and distinct. It was overwhelming at first, but when he stopped, the world became dull and ordinary. He would have manifested all the time if he could. The day he’d be able to manifest perpetually was not far off. But if this force returned, how could he use it? He was shaken to the core. Something was out there.
Richard tapped some controls, looking to restore the gauntlet’s circuitry, and then sighed in resignation. “We’re done for the day.”
Owen got to his feet and collapsed onto the chair behind him.
Richard opened the Plexiglas door and entered. “You’re looking more like Arthur every day, when you’re not shitting cacti.”
Owen’s bright blue eyes flashed with anger. He lifted the heavy gauntlet and rested it on the arm of the chair. “Have something to say about it?”
“You think that was an accident? He was the prototype and the antecedent in many ways.”
“What does this have to do with the damn gauntlet?”
“Absolutely nothing, although, it would be interesting to see how much better his Caliburn rings would work on you.”
Owen hadn’t thought of that. Brain-wave patterns were unique, but how much would they need to be altered? Would they need to be altered at all? He looked at his Nornian rings, which were thick. That was partly due to the fact that their original owner was a big man, but also due to the modifications to allow his mind to generate a matrix and channel energy. He imagined the glittering Caliburn rings there, unmodified, in an identical hand. His mind went back to the gauntlet.
“This test was abysmal.”
Richard saw his expression. “I don’t have to allow you to do the testing, y’know. I pick the test subjects.”
Owen wiped the sweat from his face. “I know.” He had to accept things as they were, for now. Morgan had denied him the role as leader of the Operations Team. So Richard had agreed to allow him to test the new gauntlets. Owen hoped it would show Morgan his desire to be more than just a trainer and blood sample. Why couldn’t he make her see that he was better than Arthur? There was a creak as Owen mangled the chair arm with the gauntlet and realized how angry he felt.
“I’m going to have to dial back the servo responsiveness,” Richard mused, unplugging the gauntlet from the systems and getting a wrench to manually open it. “And this prototype is much better than the previous one. I wish your cousin would stop taking my gear for no discernible purpose. It’s damned hard enough just developing this tech, y’know.”
“What about the part about it losing power?”
“I’m not a miracle worker. I’m also not an engineer. I’m a nanotechnologist.” He patted the gauntlet. “What’s built in here is partly the matrix we’ve replicated, but there’s technology to tune the waveform to its wearer. It’ll get smaller, but all these additions were to help compensate.”
“I’ll never be able to swing it fast enough.”
Richard put the pipe between his teeth and continued to work. “Looking to get into some sword fights? I thought those went the way of Errol Flynn and the Three Musketeers. Or at least The Princess Bride.”
“That’s exactly what I intend to do.” Owen frowned as he watched.
Richard unlatched the gauntlet. “This is just a prototype. Like the focal prototype your mother brought, this is larger than it needs to be. When we get it down to a manageable size, we won’t need the servo systems. It’s got issues, but the matrix tuned to you this time.”
“Like what you did with Nornian?” Owen asked, flexing his right hand.
Richard shook his head. “At best, Nornian is aligned to a hundredth of a percent with months of work. This was a near-perfect tune and it took only a few hours.” Richard released the final catch, and the gauntlet opened and Owen was able to slip his arm out of it. “There we go. Once we get it right, we can tune the device to you or anyone who can manifest in a moment. Then the gauntlets can be produced in large quantities.”
“You seem to think we’ll have more candidates than gauntlets.”
“We already do, and that’s not going to change until we get these into production.”
“It’s a shame you can’t get them into ring form.”
“A gauntlet or glovelike form makes it easier to interchange. There are only a few glove sizes, but a lot of sizes for rings, and you have three of them—a different size for each finger. What a pain in the arse.”
Owen rubbed his left arm. His arm felt like it was being constricted by the gauntlet, like a blood pressure strap squeezed a few times. “What if we made a whole suit like the gauntlet?”
Richard chuckled. “Iron Man? Completely impractical. Then you’d really be slow and cumbersome. You’re already high KE proof. What more do you need?”
Owen smiled. “Augmented strength? Jet boots?”
Richard laughed. “You’re already augmented, and flight in such a suit is fantasy. At least with the technology we have now.”
Owen thought about it for a while, then seemed to agree. “What if you could cram a collector grid into it?”
“We’ll get the grid into a backpack, but the field it will emit will be short and the power conduit will be limited. I got a version reduced to the size of a roll-away case. Decent range, but it’s not perfect.”
“Might be a good backup system.”
“You’re right, which is why we’re working on it.”
Richard disconnected all the leads and wires from Owen’s face, chest, and arms. Owen stood and examined the mangled armrest of the chair and then the table with its overturned equipment. Richard hefted the gauntlet onto a workbench. “Power loss, size, weight. These are all surmountable. The real problem is that it’s leaky as hell.”
Owen rubbed his forearm. “Leaky?”
“These focal devices put out a particular energy signature. See, this is the beauty of Dr. di Lago’s work—”
“Let’s not get all googly-eyed.”
“You have to appreciate the work of a master,” Richard clucked. “Ogier combed through our test records on our man Brastius. There were small distinct signatures—not easily detected by most modern equipment, but if you aggregated enough disparate and mundane sensors, you could find the waveform. At least, that’s how we think the Avallach bastards found it. I’ll be damned if I know what they used to aggregate the enormous amount of data they had to sift through, but our own records and advanced sensing equipment found the signature easily. Incredibly small, really.” Richard gazed at Nornian. “Such perfect tuning.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
Richard patted the gauntlet, which now looked like the robotic equivalent of a biology experiment. The guts of the system were spread wide open, revealing internal sensors and components. “As much as our system has perfected the tuning aspect, its signature leakage is strong and pronounced.”
“So?”
“It’s a signature. Not only is it traceable to where you are, it can even tell someone who you are.”
Owen looked down at his rings. “So, I can be tracked by my rings?”
“If they knew what they were looking for, yes. The focal rings had a minimal signature until we modified them. Now they’re a bit leaky. Not as bad as the gauntlets are now.” He motioned around him. “We’ve shielded any signatures from leaking outside Brightwork. The thing is, with Nornian, if they do get a sniff of a signature, the chances are, they’ll think you’re Brastius, not . . . you.”
“Because the rings are tuned to him?”
“They were, and the signature is close. You’d see that it was his signature, but garbled.”
There were possibilities in that, but Owen needed to think. What did that mean for him? What did that mean for Avallach? Could he find out where Arthur was? Confront him? Take him down? The possibilities sifted in his mind, the compulsion all but forgotten.
* * *
Owen arched his spine, his hands caressing her body and her curves. Long blond tresses swept down her back as she straddled him. She was lithe and athletic, and his body responded as much as his mind. They moved faster and faster, spiraling into pleasure. Owen closed his eyes and slid his hand along her hip. She felt like her, what she would feel like again. Her fingers clasped his. He moved his other hand along the small of her back, between her shoulder blades, and then into her hair. He grasped it and tugged, losing himself in the pleasure of the moment. She gasped and her hair became slack.
He opened his eyes and she looked back at him in surprise, the blond wig in his hand. He threw it across the room, the pleasure switching to anger, like a broken spell.
“I didn’t like it anyway.” Kara ran her fingers through her shoulder-length auburn hair.
Owen frowned. “That wasn’t the point.”
“And what’s the point?”
Owen had lost the moment. He pushed her off of him and got up.
“Are you mad at me?” Kara called after him.
“Why would I be mad at you? I still fucked you.”
“You didn’t finish.”
“Story of my life.” Owen pulled on a robe.
“Want me to leave?”
“Do what you want.”
“Come on, don’t be mad at me,” Kara said, getting up. “You have a thing for blondes. Maybe I’ll dye my hair next time?”
“You can stay if you want.” Owen closed the door behind him. His heart was racing and he felt cheated. It should’ve been her, he told himself.
In his living room, Owen poured himself a tumbler of scotch. Even the buzz of alcohol had diminished in the face of the greater high that manifesting gave. He’d done cocaine before, and yet that hardly came close to what manifest power felt like. No wonder Arthur did not want to give it up when Marks tried to shut down Avallach.
Owen sat down at his desk, opened a drawer, and pulled out a small stack of black folders. He took another swig and flipped through the material. Reports on Avallach and Arthur that the former DARPA Black director Ryan de Vance had made. A lot of the information was on Brightwork itself, but there were investigations into Arthur’s past, per General Marks’s request. Both of Arthur’s parents had been a part of an old project called Spartan, long since defunct. Arthur was a product of that project, and by direct correlation, so was Owen himself. Owen wondered if he was the only copy.
He read over what little was known of Spartan and concluded that it was unlikely. Cloning had been around for decades, though not taken seriously until Dolly the Sheep came along in the mid-1990s. Genetic experimentation was more avant-garde during that time, and Spartan was one of those projects. There was a long list of spinoff and branch projects; it was hard to tell if Spartan was a success or not, though none of the results had ever been released. DARPA had a habit of exploring vast avenues of science to see what was possible as well as abandoning unsuccessful endeavors.
He shoved that aside, not caring to know much about it. He read through a small file on Arthur’s mother. Igerne MacGabran, a neurobiologist of some renown then, had moved from Spartan to an older project called Astrologer, which also spun out into a dozen side projects when it was dismantled or deemed as ineffective as its predecessor Nostradamus. Written in small script in the margin, probably by de Vance, was the phrase “Marks—Delphi? Shut down?” Owen considered that. He pulled out a file and read through some scant notes he’d found in Marks’s study. They were mostly written in an oblique manner, referring to Delphi only twice. There was something in this, but what was the importance of it? It was a hunch, but he filed the information away in his mind. He’d be able to sort it out later. He put the paperwork together and pushed the file away.
He pored through files on Avallach. There was an after-action report on Indiana Beckham’s encounter with a black ops squad. It made for interesting reading. He stared at the image of Indiana wearing a white bodysuit. Something about her stance and face spoke to Owen. This was the woman who was, by all accounts, the strongest Avallach candidate—stronger than even Arthur, the progenitor. If de Vance’s reports were correct, Indiana had never peaked in power. After she had been expunged from Avallach, she fell of the radar. A few months ago, Morgan had found out through DARPA that Indiana was dead now, destroyed on the flight of a prototype shuttle stolen from its launchpad the very same day Marks tried to shut down Avallach. That was as much as was known.
Owen downed the rest of his scotch and sat back. The alcohol burned in his belly, but rather than dull his emotions, it made him tired. He stared at the photo of Indiana and imagined her with blue eyes.
He stalked through the woods, a young boy close at his side. He knelt and examined the soft forest floor and sniffed the air.
“Something?” the boy said.
“Spoor. He’s close,” the bronze-skinned man who was Owen said. He planted his spear, opened the sachet at his neck, and smeared the paste onto his skin. It was made from the urine of another boar mixed with the blood of a female and preserving mud. It stung his eyes. The boy made a face.
“The boar knows that man hunts,” Owen said to the boy. “But if it thinks another male boar is rutting in its territory, it’ll come to us.” He picked up his spear and continued on, his dark eyes gazing at every patch and leaf for indications of passage.
“But we’re hunting him.”
Owen tossed the boy the sachet. “We’re downwind and he can smell us. We’re not hunters anymore—things to avoid and ignore. We’re enemies now. He’ll come to us.”
“Wha—”
There was a sound. The man stopped and turned, squatting down. A snort or grunt. The boy followed suit. He searched the dappled forest, but the undergrowth was thick. Gods, this was a great hunt!
Owen stalked toward the sound of the boar, circling to make sure his scent was in the beast’s nostrils. The rustling was louder and there was a squeal. Owen turned, and a flash of tusk came from the brush toward the boy. He shoved the boy out of the way with his shoulder, sparing him from the tusk and getting his spear in the boar’s path. But the hunter wasn’t set as the boar charged. The spear glanced off the hide of the beast. He shrieked in pain as the tusks of the great boar gored him and threw him back into nothing.
Owen snapped awake, his glass shattering on the ground.
“Shit,” he gasped, the dregs of the dream wiped away with shock of being awake.
Kara came out of the bedroom, a kimono cinched around her waist. “Something wrong?”
Owen held out a hand. “There’s glass everywhere.”
She stopped, barefoot, then padded slowly over.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Owen said. He considered the dream. He rubbed his lean stomach, imagining his intestines in his hand. It was curious, but not all that disturbing. She placed her arms around his neck. “I’m sorry,” he said automatically, lost in thought.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, running her hands down his chest and kissing his ear. He felt the coolness of her rings on his bare skin. He took her hand in his. Eurfron, her rings were called now, but before that they were Joyous, Indiana Beckham’s first set of focal rings.
“Do you want me to clean it up?” Kara asked, looking at the shattered glass.
Owen made a fist. “Do you have plans today?”
Kara shrugged and smiled. “Just another day of training. Commander Holt is taking the team through indoctrination of new procedures. I could be persuaded . . .”
Owen kissed her bejeweled fingers. Joyous. “Can you come to the lab with me? I want to look over some logs and try something.”
“Weren’t you just at the lab today?”
“I want you to test something for me.”
“That sounds vague and mysterious. What are you thinking about?”
He looked at the photo of Indiana again. The compulsion was a memory now, but it had imprinted something on his mind. “Just to test a theory. Boar shit.”
7
Priorities
ISTANBUL, TURKEY—
“I don’t want to tell you what to do, but you need to shit or get off the pot,” Ed said.
“What?”
“This game you’re playing with yourself. Should I stay? Should I go? That kind of problem is really distracting.”
“I’m not dis—”
“For us, not you.”
“Oh.”
“What’re you thinking?”
Percy looked out the window, admiring the bustle of life. A warm breeze wafted through the opening, a far cry from the cold weather gripping the United States. He rubbed his neck. “Thinking about a family, I guess.”
Ed yawned next to him, his black sunglasses reflecting the sunny day’s glare. “Anything?” he asked, sounding bored. Percy knew he was alert and scanning the streets below. They were both in street clothes, their n-suits concealed beneath.
