Rogue (5 page)

The guard perked up and immediately stepped away in that direction.

Ajay's eyes widened. “That's a new one,” he whispered, once the guard moved out of range.

“I've had three weeks to work on a few moves,” she said. “Follow me.”

They crept along the gravel path until they reached the small stone mausoleum. Ajay pulled out another one of the devices he'd been working on.

“Not yet,” said Elise, slapping his hand.

“What do we do, then? It's supremely dangerous to just stand out here exposed in the open like this.”

Elise glanced at her watch. “We need to get down to the water.”

The elevator trembled slightly, building to a greater rate of speed as they descended. Will tried to estimate how far down they were traveling as he listened; clearly they were going far deeper, maybe
twice
as deep than they had dropped already.

All the way down to the hospital this time.

“Consider for a moment, Will, the whole of our narrative,” said Franklin, hands folded behind his back, looking up at the ceiling. “The Knights of Charlemagne is an organization that is over six hundred years old, ruled throughout the centuries by the same guiding philosophy. Working always behind the scenes, utterly without interest in fame or glory, invisible to the common man and thus able to apply a consistent moral gravity on the course charted by Western civilization. In this regard, we have no equals in history.”

“How did we do it?”

Franklin turned to him, his bright eyes lit up by a believer's zeal. “One reason alone—we never worked for personal gain. The Knights remain single-mindedly focused on the betterment of our race. Recognizing always that the upward development and growth of the human being—our
physical
evolution aside—have always been due, not to the masses but to the efforts of the extraordinary few.”

“The tip of the spear theory,” said Will, remembering a lecture by Professor Sangren, his history teacher.

“That's exactly right, Will. All meaningful progress in our history has been generated by a select few, the best and brightest of us who make up that sharp point of the spear. My father ascribed to this theory and he was one hundred percent correct about, well, at least this much. And he founded the Center here in pursuit of furthering that goal. I give Thomas all due credit for that, an honorable effort in support of a noble cause.

“But Thomas was not a Knight, and although he was given many opportunities to join them, he refused all their entreaties, dismissing them out of hand. Such was my father's pride, his supreme belief in his own singular vision. As a result, he didn't go nearly far enough to face the rising challenges that lay ahead of us. The Knights believe, correctly, that the human race is headed for self-destruction. Stupidity, greed, lack of foresight, driven and all too easily led by fear—this is humankind's natural state, Will. It's brought down every civilization that's flowered on this earth.”

“And you think you can change that,” said Will.

“I know we can. Because since the beginning of this new relationship, through the gifts provided by our friends, we possess an opportunity to advance our species, not solely in the social, political, or intellectual arenas, but in
all
of them, and to do so along with our physical development
simultaneously.

“Nothing like our program has ever been attempted in recorded time. It's never been possible before, because we possessed neither the knowledge nor the adequate scientific techniques. We no longer have to wait for evolution to create a stronger, wiser human being; we can engineer it ourselves.”

Will felt a cold chill. He wasn't sure if they'd descended so far underground that the air had cooled.

“As you know, Will, Dr. Joe's first attempts at the Paladin process with my lamented classmates fell short of our expectations—regrettably—but science never makes progress without trial and error.”

“What about Hobbes, or Stephen Nepsted?” asked Will, struggling to stay calm. “They weren't both failures, at least not at first.”

“No, they were great successes, rightfully celebrated. And their personal achievements provided enough encouragement for us to forge ahead, on a less ambitious scale, until the rest of the means and methods we needed fell into place.”

“How long did that take?”

“Nearly forty years. Oh, we had other successes during these lean decades that kept us going. One in particular that we'd asked our friends to help us with—the development of a treatment to halt the aging process.”

Will looked at him, puzzled. Franklin smiled at him, anticipating the question Will was thinking.

“Why? Because we knew that in Dr. Abelson we had our greatest chance for realizing our ambitions, but the good man was getting on in years. So our friends bestowed upon us a simple biological technique that slows, and nearly stops altogether, the deterioration of the human body. It turned out to be as simple as flipping off a switch, the one that instructs our cells to stop reproducing. Canceling the organism's expiration date, so to speak.”

“And you used it on yourselves.”

“Dr. Abelson insisted we try this protocol on him first, of course, and then I volunteered—twenty years after I'd lost my chance to participate the first time. That was nearly sixty years ago, Will. Joe was almost sixty at that time. I was nearly forty. Now I'd say the results speak for themselves, wouldn't you?”

Franklin grinned at him, stretching the skin around his face tight to his skull. Will raised his eyebrows and nodded, wondering what he'd see if he looked at his grandfather through the Grid, choking back his revulsion.

“Mortality for the masses is a blessing. We'd never survive billions of these loathsome
oiks
hanging on indefinitely, draining essential resources from our planet with their hunger for violence and mindless animal appetites. But for those few of us with the intelligence, vision, and will to chart a new course for human history? Death is a seriously stupid inconvenience.”

The elevator slowed and came to a quick stop. The steel doors slid open. Franklin led Will out into the space he and his friends had discovered earlier in the year, near the rear of the underground hospital, which was subdivided into two smaller rooms. One was the locked chamber at the far end where the freakish remains of his grandfather's classmates were stored in metallic cylinders.

And the room next to it that held the devices of aphotic technology.

Getting closer.

Out of that room stepped another of Franklin's original class of Knights, Edgar Snow. The man Will knew as Mr. Hobbes and the leader of the Black Caps. Bald, taut as barbed wire, his malevolent eyes gleaming. Will hadn't seen him in weeks. He was supposed to be Franklin's age, but he didn't look a day over forty. And a rock-hard, badass forty at that.

“Hello, Will,” said Hobbes with a smile in his surprisingly soft voice.

“Edgar,” said Will.

“I asked Edgar to join us so he could show and explain to you how some of our more recent gifts from the Others work,” said Franklin.

“Sounds good,” said Will blandly.

Will blinked on his Grid and saw the heat signature of three others just outside the door. Two figures followed Hobbes into view a moment later, Todd and Courtney Hodak, the brother and sister freak team. Wearing shorts, T-shirts, and running shoes, taut muscles rippling, their eyes alight with the same dark gleam, smiling aggressively. Will hadn't seen them for a few weeks either.

“If it isn't the Doublemint Twins,” said Will.

Franklin got a polite chuckle out of that.

“Hello, West,” said Courtney, with slightly less than her usual sneer.

Todd only nodded at him, the hostility in his eyes needing no elaboration.

“Nice to see you guys,” said Will.

The last person to step into the room was Lemuel Clegg, Elliot's morose butler.

This wasn't going to be as easy as it looked. And he'd already thought it was almost impossible.

Ajay pointed out the concealed camera in the trees within seconds of their arrival at the eastern shore.

“Is there a microphone attached?” asked Elise, looking up at it.

“I don't see one from here.”

“How close are they?” asked Elise, turning to the lake.

Opening his eyes wide, Ajay quickly scanned the water to the northern side and focused in on some unusual ripples in the water.

“Less than two minutes,” said Ajay.

“Let me know when they're about to reach the surface,” said Elise.

She moved to the tree trunk, grabbed a branch, and quickly shinnied up ten feet to the camera mounting. The camera sat on a swivel, slowly panning back and forth across a big slice of the lake. She looked down and waited for a signal from Ajay.

He raised his hand. When the disturbance in the water reached within twenty feet of the shoreline, Ajay lowered it.

Elise leaned in toward the device, pursed her lips, and whistled in a low, sustained almost inaudible frequency. The camera emitted a troubled scratching sound as she scrambled its internal electrical signals.

Moments later, Nick rose out of the water. The first thing he saw was Ajay frantically waving him ashore, just outside of the camera's view. Nick quickly sloshed out and joined him at the edge of the woods.

Just behind Nick, something smaller breached the surface. At first Ajay thought he was looking at the head of an otter, but that was obscured a moment later by a burst of turbulence when the shape swelled and changed into that of a man.

Coach Ira Jericho stepped out of the lake and quickly followed Nick into the cover of the trees. Ajay hurried after him, lost in thought, trying to sort out what he'd just witnessed and couldn't let go of. Once they reached the others, Ajay gaped at Jericho, searching for some kind of clarification for something he couldn't compute.

“It's not polite to stare,” said Jericho, without turning to him.

“Am I staring? I don't believe so—that is, I didn't intend to stare, if I actually am. I'm not, actually. Now I'm looking over here—”

“Ajay, Coach,” said Nick. “Coach, Ajay.”

“I haven't had the pleasure,” said Ajay, shaking Coach's hand.

“I assume that's why he introduced us,” said Jericho.

“Well, yes, because it's highly unlikely we would have ever met on the playing fields,” said Ajay. “You see, I'm not terribly athletic.”

“Oh, I disagree,” said Nick. “I'd say you're
EXTREMELY
terrible at athletics.”

“Never mind,” said Ajay.

Elise dropped down from the tree and joined them. “Let's hit it.”

She led them back through the woods toward the mausoleum, trotting in a low crouch. Jericho jogged alongside her, Nick and Ajay following behind them.

“Have you heard from Will?” asked Jericho.

“Not yet,” said Elise, glancing at her watch. “But we need to be next to that elevator when I do.”

“Nick, did the others contact you as planned?” asked Ajay.

“First thing this morning,” said Nick, glancing at his watch. “The Perfessor said they'd be at the location exactly when they're supposed to be.”

“Do you trust them?” asked Elise, glancing back at him.

“I trust him to do what he said they would, yeah, absolutely. Why, don't you?”

“I gave up trusting a long time ago,” she said.

“I like the way you think,” said Jericho.

Franklin led Will into the device room. Clegg followed while Hobbes and the Hodaks stayed near the doorway. Will put out his stoutest mental defenses and kept as far away from them as he could, closing his mind to prevent any of them from picking up the slightest hint of his intentions from either thoughts, tells, or behavior. He was most wary of Clegg, a man who'd always given him the creeps and who was more than physically capable of giving him trouble.

“We're all blessed, Will, that the Others have been so generous to us over the course of our long and mutually beneficial relationship,” said Franklin, his hand trailing over a control panel near the door.

“How so?”

“They've provided us with an abundance of miracles to behold. Since the end of World War Two, Dr. Abelson and the research and development team we've assembled here have turned dozens of their gifts into groundbreaking scientific and industrial patents.”

As Franklin spoke, the stark white walls of the room illuminated like a light board. A slideshow display of modern technological advances appeared all around them. Many of the objects looked purely technical and obscure, but more than a few—a fax machine, a microwave, a cellular phone—were familiar, even commonplace, consumer goods.

“You've got to be kidding,” said Will.

“Not in the slightest. This was intentional on their part; the commercial exploitation of these more prosaic offerings has resulted in an unlimited source of funding for our more…ambitious work.”

They approached the two bright steel cylinders in the center of the room that Will had discovered during their last trip down here. Clegg positioned himself just behind Will's left shoulder, in a blind spot.

Maybe Franklin doesn't trust me as much as I thought.

“During the last three decades, they've given us leads to devices more specifically beneficial to our higher ambitions,” said Franklin, trailing a hand across one of the smooth, shiny containers.

“Ones that helped you start to realize the Paladin Prophecy,” said Will.

“Precisely,” said Franklin, then raised his forefinger. “But it wasn't their work alone. I'm proud to tell you it was your father's research that gave us the key to understanding exactly how we could bring our ambitions to reality. In spite of his subsequent betrayal, I give him all credit where credit is due.”