A Question of Will (22 page)

The man rose to his feet, nearly a head taller than The Assassin. “I should hate all Assassins, shouldn’t I? I should kill you on the spot, right here, right now, simply because of what you are. Yet when given the chance, I kicked you a few times, and then I gave you medicine that healed your wounds. Why? Because I won’t give in to the animal nature like you have. I won’t become what I detest.”

The Assassin laughed. “Lovely speech. A morality plea? How comic. And the arrogance, too. You, able to kill
me
? No one kills me. Least of all a coward too weak to avenge those he claims to have loved. I avenge my own with each bit of blood I spill. You spit on the existence of yours with each life, like mine, that you spare.” The Assassin stepped forward, blood-red eyes glinting, the malice so intense that the temperature in the room seemed to rise.

The man in the sunglasses stood still. The Assassin was nearly upon him, and laughed again. “Foolish human. You should have killed me when you had the chance.” He raised his sword.

The man smiled back at him. “Oh, I’m not foolish.”

The Assassin felt an invisible glove surround him, pinning him still, and there was a look of shock upon his ugly, scarred face. He still felt no Energy from the man.

“I am, though, quite human, just as you are at your core. You deny it as something shameful, but without that starting point you have no way of measuring how much you’ve developed yourself. Or, in your case, how far you’ve fallen.”

The Assassin’s scowl deepened.

“I refuse to deny what I am. The humanity in me prevents me from killing you now, even though I could do so with ease.” The Assassin felt the glove start to tighten, ever so slowly, until he couldn’t breathe. Then the glove released, just enough to enable him to breathe again. “But I won’t. I will not, however, deny others their opportunity to act on their own nature. You see, Assassin, when I rescued you from that burning house, I brought someone else with me as well. Like you, I healed her of her wounds. And now, she’d like to reveal her own inner animal to you.”

The Assassin blinked. Was this man talking about the human woman married to Will Stark? Was this young man, not Will Stark, the one to make the woman and child vanish? How could he do that, with no detectable Energy?

“But before I let the two of you get reacquainted, I feel you must do so on an even footing. She comes to you unarmed. And you must meet her unarmed as well.” The sword was torn from his grasp, before he even knew it was missing, and he watched as it moved through the wall and outside the room, safely beyond his reach.

“She also comes to you not enhanced by Energy, so we will even things up in that area as well.” The Assassin felt something surround his Energy stores, shutting off all access to them, and he felt helpless and human as he experienced the same sensation those meeting Aramis’ Damper felt. He fell to the floor, surprised, as the invisible, restraining glove released him, but quickly scrambled to his feet. Instinct screamed at him to charge the man, but he controlled himself.

“Now that the two of you are on a more even footing, Assassin, I’d like to present an old friend.” The man licked his lips, and then whistled.

A dog, a black Labrador retriever, trotted in through the wall, attracted by the sound of the whistle. The dog seemed cheerful, tail high, panting in the manner of her kind. She trotted to the man with the sunglasses, who patted the dog on the head. “Assassin, meet Smokey. Smokey, meet The Assassin.”

The dog paused, sniffed the air, and turned to face The Assassin. The dog’s hackles rose, and a deep, rumbling growl sounded. The hairs on the back of the Assassin’s neck stood on end. He knew true fear, his first experience of the emotion — on the receiving end — in a very long time.

“Smokey remembers what happened the last time you met, you see. She knows that you attacked two humans she cared for. She remembers that you hurt her as well.” He smiled, and there was no mirth to the expression, even without being able to see his eyes. “I believe she’d like to discuss the matter with you, in her own fashion.”

He patted the dog on the head. “Sic ‘em, girl.”

Growling, the dog charged The Assassin. The man threw an arm up to defend himself and fell in the process. The dog seized the limb in her jaws and bit down with every bit of savagery a canine could muster, tearing skin and muscle. The Assassin screamed as the sharp pain overwhelmed him. He tried to position himself to kick her, but with four legs planted firmly on the ground, she easily maneuvered around the attempted blows. Survival instinct kicked in for him, and he moved his torso closer to her, rolling off his backside on to his knees, with the dog hanging on to his shredded arm. The Assassin raised his elbow and slammed it into the dog’s head, but Smokey didn’t react. He tried again, and this time she saw the blow coming. She released her jaws and sprang away, and The Assassin howled anew as he struck his own mangled arm. The nerve endings and muscles were torn and blood flowed freely. The arm was effectively dead.

While The Assassin stared at his injury, the dog pounced again, paws hitting him firmly in the chest, knocking him onto his back. The force of it slammed his head onto the ground, and he saw stars. His instinct kicked in, and he threw his injured arm in front of his face while swinging his good arm in an arc. The good arm made contact, and Smokey was knocked away from him, hitting the ground on her side. Smokey rolled twice, scrambled up on all four paws, and charged the man again. The Assassin had been trying to get to his feet, his good arm under him as he tried to press himself up to his knees, and the weight of the dog landing on his back unbalanced him. He landed face-first on the floor in a pool of his own blood, and felt the dog’s teeth sink into the skin of his neck, the snarling rage filled with blood lust, and The Assassin was very aware that he was going to die.

“To me, Smokey.” The man’s voice carried to The Assassin’s ears, faint. But he felt the teeth release him, was aware that the animal had left him, and was suddenly quite grateful to be alive. He spent several minutes face down on the ground, breathing rapidly at first, then more deeply, until his heart rate stabilized. He was still weak from the blood loss in his arm, but he was alive and would survive. With agonizing effort, he used his functioning arm to push himself up onto his knees, resting back on his haunches.

The man with the sunglasses sat in the same chair, watching him with interest. At his side sat the dog, Smokey, the latter sporting a look of extreme contentment as the man scratched her behind the ears. There was no sign in the dog’s current demeanor of the vicious beast that had attacked and nearly killed him, save for a small amount of his blood on her snout..

“You see,” the man said, “we all have our moments of violence, when our inner animal comes out, including cases when we are actually animals.” He nodded at the dog. “And yet here you see Smokey in a state that would be her most normal, a pleasant and friendly companion, happy with the simplest gestures. When she felt threatened, however, she reacted with violence, though perhaps if she’d taken the time to assess the situation she would have realized that you are currently no threat to either of us, and thus the attack was unnecessary.”

He patted the dog, and Smokey trotted back toward The Assassin. The man lurched backward away from the animal, terrified that she would attack again. He crashed into the wall, that wall that let everyone and everything in and out but him, and he was trapped. His legs kept moving, trying to push his body through the wall, desperate to get away from the vicious beast before she attacked him. He threw his good arm up in front of his face. Smokey moved closer, cautious, and sniffed. He could feel her hot breath on his face, see his own blood still on her snout.

The Assassin’s will broke. She was too close, he was too frail, and he had none of his usual tools of violence available to defend himself. He let his legs go limp, and dropped his arm from its defensive position. The dog had defeated him, and she would kill him.

Smokey watched him, panting. Then she moved up next to him and licked The Assassin’s face. She sat down on her haunches next to him, tail wagging.

The Assassin was stunned. Wasn’t this animal the same one that had attacked him without remorse only a few moments earlier? What was this behavior?

“She likes to be scratched behind the ears,” the man with the sunglasses offered.

You have got to be kidding me
, The Assassin thought. But the dog hadn’t attacked him again. Yet. And so, with a great deal of anxiety, he reached his good hand over, resting it on the dog’s fur, and started to scratch. The dog’s eyes closed, and she seemed to be very content.

“I think she likes you.”

“She has no need or reason to like me,” The Assassin said. “I fully expect her to finish me off at any second.”

“She reacts as instinct demands to defend herself and those she cares for,” the man replied. “If you are no threat, then she’s quite happy to be friends. If you move to attack her, however, or threaten me...well, you know what she can do when provoked.”

The man stood. “Come, Smokey,” he called, and the dog trotted away from The Assassin, back to his side. The man faced The Assassin. “I will send someone in to provide medication that will heal those wounds and help you sleep, at which point we will discuss your future options.”

“You can’t trust me,” The Assassin snapped. “I’ll kill every single one of you when I get the chance. You should execute me now, not restore my health.”

“A man who pats the head of a dog that just mauled him is one who can learn to trust and be trusted. I dare say you are more capable of change than you realize.” Fil and the dog left the room, melting through the walls, and the Mechanic reappeared. He pulled out a potion and gave it to The Assassin.

“What’s this?” the injured man asked.

“It’s the medication Fil mentioned,” the man replied. “It will help you sleep and heal the wounds you got in your little duel.”

The Assassin smirked, the action sending a shooting pain through him. “More like it will kill me,” he muttered.

The Mechanic shrugged. “We’ve had every opportunity to kill you. I could do that right now.”

The Assassin nodded, though it nearly killed him to acknowledge the fact. “I know.” He opened the bottle and drank the contents. He started to feel the effects of the sleeping potion almost immediately, and as his eyes started to flutter shut and the adrenaline of the fight wore off, he truly felt the pain.

He was vaguely aware of the Mechanic carrying him to a bed that hadn’t been in the room moments ago. Perhaps the chair the man with the glasses had used could be changed into one? The Mechanic placed something on the bed next to the Assassin. “I have a feeling you’ll need this again. Use it with greater wisdom in the future.” He turned and left.

The Assassin’s good arm moved to the object, his hand grazing the surface, and he felt the familiar texture of his sword just as sleep claimed him.

XVI

Energy

Will had settled into a routine that had become his new normal, reflective of the incredible ability of human beings to adapt to new circumstances.

A few weeks earlier, his life revolved around his wife and son, his philanthropic work, and his businesses, in that order. Today, he could no longer spend time on any of them, outside the happy memories he had to dig to find. More frequent were the flashbacks of the last minutes before his rescue. Michael Baker’s look of horror at seeing the two dead guards. The killer standing in his house, the blood dripping from the sword the man carried. The explosion and fire that destroyed his house. The maniacal frenzy of anger and rage in the faces of the three Hunters as they kicked and beat him, as Athos slit his cheeks to match the scar on the Hunter’s face, of Aramis’ look of righteous fury as the man tried to stab him to death along with his fellow Hunters.

What truly told him that his life was different was waking up each day in that empty white room, where he’d roll to his side and not see Hope’s sleeping form beside him. There was no daily walk down the hall to see Josh and his faithful companion, Smokey, wondering and ever hopeful that that day would be the one the boy would finally speak. That day would never come now, and he’d go to his grave having never heard his son’s voice or laughter.

But his new normal now dominated his thoughts, and he kept pushing the flashbacks deep into his mind for later, a brief moment when their recollection would serve as a form of penance and self-condemnation. At the moment, he was focused, at Adam’s direction, on making sure that he remained floating three feet off the ground, levitating himself with his own Energy. The marvel of human adaptability was that this seeming wizardry was as normal to him now as driving a car had been then.

Progress had been steady. Adam worked with him for a few hours at a time, mostly teaching him how to sense and grow his Energy levels. Will, with nothing else to do, spent every waking moment before and after his sessions figuring things out for himself.

He had also finally left the room he’d been living in, walking through the walls like the others did. Adam noted he was not a prisoner and never had been, and the other buildings in the community were built with a similar technology; he was free to attempt to enter any he liked. The buildings were, in essence, intelligent; if he wasn’t permitted in a building, he wouldn’t be able to get in.