Guardian Angel (42 page)

But I never returned to the Guardians.

Instead, I first took refuge in a psionic settlement loosely associated with the restored Meridian. I lived alone, quietly watching the world change. I rarely met anyone from the Guardians or from Wood-claw.

But I kept in touch.

Scott and Rachael had returned to Wood-claw, and from them I learned that Marion had been reunited with her mother in New Haven. Though Marion’s mother had come to New Haven as a converted Angel, she had originally been a Guardian who had unwittingly married the Seraph spy, Raider. Now, free of her conversion and of her deceased husband, she kept her condominium in NH-4. But she was still a frequently traveling hardcore businesswoman with little interest in taking care of a young, traumatized daughter. Marion was passed around several homes belonging to increasingly distant relatives, spending very little time in New Haven. Later, when one of her temporary families joined the Angels, Marion went away with them.

I tried to locate James’s parents to tell them how their son died, but I learned that both had been killed during the Angel takeover of New Haven. James Turner was posthumously awarded the title of Honorary Guardian Knight for his services in Nonus Twenty Point Five. His name, along with his parents’ and Willow’s and the many others’ who had died in the defense of New Haven, is carved into a stone memorial that stands in the entrance hall of the gathering place under NH-1.

Mr. Travis Baker, who had served Randal Divine as his personal healer and chief political advisor, never returned to the Guardian Council. Fearing that he too would be executed by the High Seraphim, Mr. Baker fled back to the Guardians, where he was granted asylum in New Haven. But the new Council wouldn’t allow him back into politics. When he pushed his case too far, he was banished from the psionic city. Mr. Baker was later found dead in the river that runs along the edge of New Haven. It was deemed a suicide.

Mark Parnell returned to his church in New Haven. There he preached about peace and understanding for several more years until he died of heart failure at the age of fifty-four. Far too young, I know, but I have no reason to suspect that he was murdered. Mark never found, nor ever found out what happened to, his twin brother. Mark was a good man. I wish I had known him better.

Meanwhile, Cynthia Gifford was committed to the psychiatric ward of the psionic hospital in New Haven Three. Betraying her master had broken Cindy’s mind, and she spent much of her days pacing aimlessly around the hospital ward or sitting in her room and drooling onto her bib. At night, the doctors often had to sedate her to keep her from screaming herself hoarse in the darkness.

I visited Cindy in New Haven every few months. I sat with her, calling her name, telling her mine. Just occasionally, her vacant eyes would flicker with a hint of recognition, but soon she would tilt her head to one side and mumble something incomprehensible, her expression blank and uncaring.

But I knew that Cindy was still in there somewhere. She always wore Alia’s unicorn pendant. Her hiding bubble still covered the city. So I continued to pray for her recovery with all the faith an agnostic could muster, but Cindy died twenty-two years later, having never spoken another coherent word in her life. Not a day goes by that I don’t mourn her loss or remember the heartless act that destroyed her.

But not even the psionic war could claim everyone.

Soon after the Guardians retook New Haven, Mr. Koontz, the dreamweaver Alia and I had first met at the PRC, turned up alive and well in a neighboring psionic settlement. Mr. Koontz had been one of the few who had escaped New Haven in time to avoid being forced to join the Angels. Having no family in the Guardian city to compel him to return, he remained at his new home. He is still very much a night owl.

Ed Regis found permanent work with the Guardians in New Haven, running an advanced training program for Knights selected by the Council for special operations. The former Wolf also commanded the primary security team for Council members and other VIPs, but even this job was considerably less hazardous than his previous assignments. At least he was never shot again.

Heather, Walter, Daniel and Susan all returned to New Haven safely, where they were reunited with their families after almost two years apart. Not everyone found both of their parents still alive, but it was the start of a new and hopefully happier life for them. Later, all but Daniel joined the Lancer Knights. Daniel turned out to have more brains than we gave him credit for, and after attending medical school abroad, he worked as a surgeon at the Guardian hospital in New Haven Three.

Scott and Rachael were married two years after the dissolution of the Guardian Angels. Mark, who had known Scott’s family back in New Haven, handled the ceremony, and I attended it too, serving as Scott’s best man. After the wedding, though they both had found their families alive in New Haven, Scott and Rachael continued to live in Wood-claw which, under new leadership, now had much stronger ties to the New Haven Guardians. A year and a half later, Rachael had her first baby: a healthy, beautiful girl who carried both her mother’s hider bloodline and her father’s finder bloodline. They named her Cynthia.

But my single greatest piece of news came from Candace long before Scott and Rachael’s marriage. Near the end of the very first summer, after more than six months in a coma, Alia Gifford had briefly opened her eyes.

Candace called it a miracle, but just as Dr. Greene had predicted, Alia’s recovery was a long and very painful climb. She still needed her feeding tube. It took months before she could start to move, and even then she could speak only with her telepathy, and only in very short sentences. Eventually, she learned to make sounds with her mouth and to walk with a cane.

Candace sent me periodic updates. I was, of course, happy to hear of Alia’s progress, and I did make brief visits from time to time. But for the most part, I kept my distance. I had killed Alia once in my mind, and haunted by the memory of what I had done in the aftermath, I just couldn’t go back to being her Addy.

Early the next year, when Alia was deemed fit to travel, Candace brought her to my house. Alia had lost a fair bit of her memory, some of which she would never regain, but she still remembered me. I insisted that she start calling me Adrian, and we talked quietly for many hours. I made no excuses as I gave her the full story. She nodded sadly and said that she understood, and that she forgave me. But I couldn’t forgive myself. When Alia asked if she could live with me again, I told her no.

Instead, with Mark’s help, I enrolled Alia in a church-run all-girls boarding school where the teachers could attend to her special needs and rather unique personality. At first, I feared that a religious school might in some way be monitored by the God-slayers, but the good nuns knew how to keep a secret.

Having never attended school before in her life, Alia was understandably apprehensive about her new environment, but she adapted quickly. From the cheerful messages she often sent me, I could only conclude that those were the best years of Alia’s childhood – what very little remained of it.

Since she was no longer taking care of Alia, Candace suggested that she and I get back together and see if we could patch up our lives. Candace had also lost both of her parents and most of her relatives, and she had nowhere to go except perhaps back to Wood-claw. I pitied her, but I had no intention of patching up our lives.

I couldn’t stay with Candace.

It was mostly for the same reasons that I couldn’t stay with Alia. I had set out to die, and in a way, I really had died. Occasional reunions were tolerable, but I couldn’t live my day-to-day in the company of people who had been a part of those tumultuous years of my life. Not when I so desperately wanted to put them behind me.

I begged Candace to understand that, but she didn’t. She insisted that us being together would heal my pain. Our final parting was very bitter, and I’m sorry for having hurt her so much.

Shortly after I broke up with Candace, I joined a Meridian-funded expedition to the Historian’s mountain. There were a few bumps on the road, but we arrived intact.

In his bizarrely decorated home office, the eccentric 3000-year-old child thanked me for my work, easily forgave me for breaking neutral ground at the Dog’s Gate, and outright refused to confirm or deny ever sending me dreamweaves.

Laughing, he said enigmatically, “People never believe you when you say you’re innocent, so why are they so certain that you’re telling the truth if you say you’re guilty?”

In retribution, I refused his request to read my past a second time, but he wasn’t very upset. I had completed my mission to restore chaos to the world of psionics, and that was enough for him.

The Meridian envoy remained at the Historian’s mountain home for six days. As I waited, I considered a lifetime stay. Here I would be safe from anyone who might recognize me as the last living descendant of a lost master-controller bloodline. The servant Havel assured me that my skills as a cook would be most welcome in the Historian’s home.

But in the end, I decided to risk the open world. No matter what the dangers, I wasn’t going to spend the rest of my life under a rock.

Back when I had set Cat’s house to explode, it had crossed my mind to just stay there and let myself die in the same blast. But I didn’t do that for two reasons. The first was that, in case Cat somehow survived the explosion, I had to make sure that I could finish the job. The second reason was that it felt like cheating. Cindy had wanted me to live.

And so I returned to civilization and started planning out a new life.

I had to be careful. With Ed Regis’s help, I changed every aspect of my identity. I had a new name, a new birth certificate, high school diploma, driver’s license, passport, everything. I also found a plastic surgeon who could make my bullet-torn right ear more presentable, no questions asked. Whenever necessary, I wore color contact lenses to balance out my eyes. I even had my P-47 tattoo removed.

What I really wanted was to get out of the psionic world completely, and perhaps find a restaurant job somewhere far from any of the factions, but that just wasn’t going to happen. I never gained a second psionic power, and I was no hider. Alone, I constantly risked capture by factions that were looking to add new members to their fighting ranks.

After some cautious searching, I finally found a small, independent psionic settlement where the members were willing to trust me without delving my mind. I freely admitted to them that I carried secrets, and they welcomed me because they needed to boost their defenses as the faction war rekindled.

But I spent more time cooking than being a soldier. This settlement was much like Mrs. Harding’s in that it relied primarily on concealment. I was told by the leader not to unnecessarily rock the boat, and I certainly had no intention to. I knew that this was the place for me.

But even there, I never fully lost touch with my former life.

I occasionally met with Scott’s family in Wood-claw, and continued to visit Cindy in New Haven. Alia still sent me stories about her life at her boarding school and told me how much she missed being my little sister.

The years passed.

I started dating a woman who, for once, wasn’t taller than me, and we got along so well that we almost started a family together. However, a few months into our engagement, we hit a brick wall. She wanted children; I had sworn not to. Personally, I would have been happy just to adopt, but she desperately wanted her own, so we went our separate ways. I felt guilty about being unable to tell her why I couldn’t have children. She never knew what I was, and since I had no intention of telling her, perhaps such a union based on lies would never have worked anyway.

Meanwhile, Alia, having graduated high school, returned to New Haven to work at the Guardian hospital in NH-3. It was the perfect place for a powerful healer, especially because there Alia could see Cindy again. When I had first talked to Alia after her coma, she had told me that she couldn’t remember anything about her adoptive mother, which was really sad. I suspected that Alia’s memory had recovered a bit more since then. She wanted to be near Cindy again, and to take care of her. That I understood.

But Alia didn’t stay in the hospital forever.

She started dating a young doctor there named Daniel (yes, the same one) who she married the year after Mark’s death. The wedding was held in Mark’s old church. Scott was the best man this time, and though I would have preferred to just sit and watch, Alia insisted that I walk her down the aisle. I knew better than to argue.

Daniel and Alia settled down together in a condo several floors above the hospital in New Haven Three. Though Alia’s past injuries prevented her from ever having children, she seemed happy with her married life.

But that ended the following year when Daniel was killed in a flash raid by the Angels. The Guardian Council, overconfident in New Haven’s unified strength, hadn’t been as prepared for the Angels as they thought they were. In addition to Alia’s husband, seven other Guardians were killed, including two small children.

From then on, though Alia continued to work as a healer in NH-3, she turned more and more to politics, hoping to save lives by influencing Council policy. Through hard work and some celebrity status being New Haven’s youngest-ever Honorary Guardian Knight, Alia soon earned herself a position on the New Haven Council. She was just twenty-seven years old when she took office: yet another youngest-ever record broken.

A few years later, when a scandal involving the Guardians and the Meridian left the head of the Council permanently banished from New Haven, Alia Gifford was sworn in as the new leader of the Guardians.

I guess some people’s lives are just meant to be extraordinary. Some people really are meant for greatness, not because it’s their destiny, but rather simply by the nature of their character and the principles they live by.

For myself, I wanted none of that, and I was glad to be living a simple life. With the exception of very occasional, unavoidable destroyer work, I lived my life peacefully, hoping that someday I really would find peace. I enjoyed the smaller things in life: neighborly friendship, clean air, a hot meal, a soothing bath and a soft bed. I did a fair bit of gardening too.