A Question of Will (24 page)

“Not yet, Will. We need to work on another skill. Your Energy development is moving at a very rapid pace, and as your Energy levels increase you’ll be more easily detected by someone like the Hunter Porthos. We’ve developed a skill called Shielding, which is something unknown outside the Alliance. It basically lets you hide your Energy and make it difficult or impossible to detect.”

Then what I saw was real
, Will thought, though he’d never thought to question it.
I’m becoming a risk
. “I don’t want to put anyone at risk. I
can’t
put anybody at risk. When can we start?”

“Let’s start now.”

Adam taught him that those with large stores of Energy naturally leaked a small portion of that Energy out into their surroundings, even when not doing Energy work. It was equivalent to the leaking of heat from the body, or electricity from wires. Unfortunately, if the individual was powerful enough, even minor leaks amounted to large amounts of Energy, and could be sensed by others. This was not something that the majority of Aliomenti concerned themselves with, for they were not Hunted; for the Alliance, the skill was essential to survival. All of them had learned to Shield to avoid detection from a distance.

Will practiced the technique, which amounted to building a mental barrier of insulation around the Energy, forcing it to remain inside him. The trick, as Adam noted repeatedly, was awareness; he would only Shield when he made the conscious effort. Over time, it would become a skill like driving, able to be done with less conscious effort, but in these early days he needed to be quite diligent. They were essentially copying Aramis’ Damper skill, but voluntarily using it on themselves.

They were just finishing up and starting back to the camp when they heard loud, rumbling noises overhead. Adam’s face tightened.

“Thunder?” Will asked.

“No,” Adam replied. “Hunters. They’ve found us.”

Will’s face fell. “No. They’ve found
me
.”

XVII

Machines

Adam sprinted back to camp, bursting through a haze inside the tree line that Will hadn’t noticed before. Will trailed closely behind. Nearly all of the buildings in the clearing had vanished, leaving not even a trace of a foundation or imprints in the grass. Only three remained, one of which was the building Will used for lodging. Adam headed that way now. Will noticed a similar haze overhead, as if a cloud had formed over their clearing, level with the tree canopy above. Fil and Angel burst from another of the remaining buildings. Angel’s face was fearful, but Fil’s face showed nothing but mangled fury. “You!” he screamed, sprinting at Will. “This is entirely
your
fault!”

Fil was on him faster than Will believed possible, and the two fell to the ground, with Will landing on his back. Fil threw fists and elbows at the pinned man, and it was all Will could do to get his arms up and defend himself. The blows came at a rate which eliminated the possibility of fighting back, and Will felt his skin bruising, his arms becoming numb. Angel looked like she wanted to say something, but opted against speaking. Both spectators looked nervous and antsy at the sounds of the nearby Hunters, glancing in the direction of the noise, watching as the hundred or more craft in the original convoy split up, presumably chasing after fleeing Alliance members they’d detected.

The attack by Fil finally stopped, Will lowered his arms. Fil’s face was one of pure fury, obvious despite the sunglasses that masked his eyes. Will didn’t need his empathy training to know what fueled it. Will’s growing Energy, and the leakages he’d never Shielded until moments before, had drawn the attention of the Hunters and brought them here. Will hadn’t fought back because he believed he deserved each and every blow.

Adam pulled Fil off of Will. “We need to get moving. Now. Deal with this later.”

Will glanced up. Aircraft of the approximate size of bicycles were visible over the nearby forest, the spot Adam and Will had just vacated. Had they zeroed in on the tree? A burst of flame erupted from one of the aircraft, igniting the trees in the distance.
His
tree. Will felt his own fury mount, and he started toward the trees.

Adam grabbed him. “No. There are too many of them, and too few of us. There were at least a hundred craft initially, and most of them are chasing others of our group who have already fled. We need to escape.” Adam pulled him along until Will moved of his own volition. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw Fil and Angel vanish inside one of the remaining buildings, just as he and Adam entered Will’s room. “Stand still,” Adam ordered. Will, not sure what to expect, did as he was told, standing still directly behind Adam.

The bed and chairs in the room melted into the floor, and the walls, floor, and ceiling collapsed inward toward the two men. Will felt a moment of panic; perhaps he was being executed for his role in leading the Hunters to camp. Adam looked calm, watching as the modest-sized room reformed around them and shaped into what looked like a flying bobsled with a clear top.

“Sit,” Adam said, and Will sat without thinking, surprised — though he wasn’t sure why — to find a seat had formed under him. The chair molded itself to him, and restraining bands serving as a seat belt held him in place. Will looked out of the clear, seamless top, and saw another vehicle where Fil and Angel’s building had stood. Shape-shifting buildings? He wondered what type of Energy enabled that. The third building remained in place and unaltered.

Things had definitely changed over the past month or so. Now, a building that stayed in one place and maintained its shape was the oddity.

The building — now a vehicle — lifted silently off the ground and followed Fil and Angel’s vehicle into the forest, away from his tree. Will glanced behind them, back toward what was left of their camp. “What’s that last building?”

“That’s where the Mechanic works. He’s usually the last one to leave. I hadn’t thought that would be your first question, though.” Adam steered the craft expertly through the trees. Will turned around, and noticed that there were no controls. He would have been surprised if there were.

Will considered the comment. “What was I supposed to ask?”

Adam risked a quick glance back at him, before returning his focus to the flying vehicle in front of him. “Perhaps why Angel and I stood back while Fil... well, while Fil vented some frustration. Given that you didn’t try to fight back, though, I imagine you figured that one out on your own.”

“He’s mad at me for drawing the Hunters here. I don’t fault him for that.”

“You should be faulting
me
, though. As your trainer I should have recognized that your Energy levels were going to make this inevitable, and taught you to Shield sooner. I really should have told you to stay in camp; we have a technology that Shields all of us while we’re in the clearing, so if I’d told you then you could have stayed where it was safe and nothing would have happened. Fil really should have come after me, but he chose you instead.”

“Lucky me,” Will muttered. “Why?”

“We go back a long way together. I helped him during a rather difficult time of his life, and so I think he feels a sense of obligation to give me a break when I don’t deserve it. In the circumstance just now, he was simply too angry to let it all go, and you were the second best candidate.” He shook his head. “I thank you for your patience with him there, and with me now.”

“So since I wasn’t going to ask you that question,” Will said, “what question was I
supposed
to ask?”

“You already know. Ask now.”

Will shrugged. “How is it that my room is now a flying bobsled?”

Adam laughed. “I hadn’t expected quite that wording. This is your introduction to our most prized technology, the one that the Elites don’t have. They can match us for Energy easily — well, except for Angel, and especially Fil — but this...this technology gives us the edge we need to survive.” He made a sharp left turn to avoid a tight cluster of trees, and then straightened back out to track behind Fil and Angel. “And the reason that they don’t have this is that we borrowed this technology from humans, then enhanced it in our fashion. What you are seeing is our version of nanomachines.”

Will was stunned. The stuff he’d used to build the Dome over Pleasanton was a material that could shape-shift from stationary building to flying vehicle? “I own a company that makes nanos, and we’re not building any that can...do all of this. And we’re the only ones, too. Other than my company, everyone’s pretty much abandoned the technology.”

Adam sighed. “For decades, nanotechnology was hailed in human circles as the next great leap in technology. Microscopic machines were going to heal our wounds, cure us of diseases, and make materials stronger and lighter than anything seen before. And then the advancement stopped. Why?”

Will shrugged. “A lot of research stopped during the depression. Nanotechnology is expensive to research. It was a pretty easy thing to cut. That’s why I had the only company left. Nobody else wanted to throw the necessary capital at it. I do remember hearing of some failed trials for the medical applications, though.”

Adam nodded. “Exactly. The Elites got wind of it. Humans becoming healthier and stronger runs counter to what they stand for. Though it’s not technically a violation of the First Oath, because the technology initiated with humans rather than Aliomenti, it was still seen as a threat to the Elites’ power. And so, they used their wealth and influence to sabotage research, and encouraged businesses to pull investments. That included those medical trials, by the way; the Elites sabotaged the samples so that patients died, rather than getting healthier. They weren’t worried about a mere construction company like yours, so you were left alone. With their mission accomplished, the Elites forgot about the technology, because after all, no human idea could have enough merit to warrant further research by the Aliomenti.” Adam laughed. “The Alliance thought otherwise. We picked up the scraps, bought the research and prototypes, and even brought in the top researchers, who were now without jobs. Those men and women became full Alliance Aliomenti and focused on the research they had thought lost to them forever. That’s where we got the Mechanic, by the way. He was the best, and his theories were among those supposedly disproved by the sabotage. The Mechanic, along with a few brilliant youngsters, made nano-machines far beyond any they thought possible before, making huge amounts of progress in only a few years.”

Will smiled. Served the Elites right. “So this flying ship is made of a few thousand tiny machines, then?”

“A few
trillion
, actually, maybe more.” He chuckled. “When you’re dealing with machines smaller than cells, the numbers get very huge very quickly. A thousand machines are a number you’d use for internal work, inside the body. For anything tangible...you’d need far more.”

“Inside the body...there are nanos that are part of The Purge, aren’t there?” Will asked. Fil had mentioned “special additives of our creation” as being part of the formula.

“Correct,” Adam said, as he swerved to avoid another tree. Just how large was this forest? They’d been traveling at a high rate of speed for quite a while. “There are foods and other natural substances which will accomplish the same thing, but at a much slower pace. Less trauma as well. That’s how our earliest members achieved what they did. With nanos, however, we could rapidly accelerate the timetable of advancement. That’s why all of us go through the Purge a few times a year, and why we had you go through it right away. We couldn’t afford to have you wait twenty years to clear your system and start sensing Energy.”

Will shook his head. “No, definitely not. It was horribly unpleasant, but now that it’s over with I’m glad you went that route with me. So what else can these machines do?”

“Well, we’ve built some to protect our camps. There are always a few set up overhead that reflect the image of trees so no clearing can be seen; another type actually blocks Energy, and keeps it inside; so we put a thin layer around the whole perimeter of camp. If the Hunters are spotted, we put a lot more of those up.” Adam smiled. “And we have a few folks doing research on how they can affect the human brain.”

“I will
not
get in there.” The Assassin glared at the Mechanic, arms folded across his chest in a show of defiance. Everything in him screamed at The Assassin to draw his sword and execute the man. But he knew he’d be stopped.

“We’ve discussed this. The Hunters are arriving even now. If they find you here, they will assume you’ve gone rogue. If they see you fleeing with me, they will assume you’ve gone rogue. If they see you with me and you then go back to Headquarters, they will take you for a traitor. You must flee with me, and you must not be seen.”

“Then leave me here.”

The Mechanic laughed. “Not an option. You’ve been gone a long time. You’ll be seen in the empty enemy camp. You can’t think that they’d trust you since you’ve never reported to them about your intentions to spy, now can you? Nor have you returned after your little outing chasing down Will Stark’s wife and child. No, if they find you right now, you’ll be taken for a traitor and executed.”

“You will
not
put me back in there.”