Greater Good

Prologue

Rashel heard the front door open and knew what was happening. She had known this would happen. She had warned her parents, but they had not believed her, had thought it to be only the over-active imagination of a child. And now…

Two loud bangs sounded and then silence once again fell over the house.

…they were dead. That had not been fair, but then, life never had been. No one had believed the truth, and now they had too much to show for it. In her mind's eye, Rashel saw the Armoured men start up the stairs towards the nursery. The one at the front, she knew, was the Leader. He would complete this mission, and the possibility that he might die trying had never occurred to him. He reached her door, and she watched the handle, waiting.

The door opened.

"That's the one," the Leader said, ushering in the Armoured Men so that they could surround the small girl sitting innocently on the floor, her book folded carefully in her lap. She looked up at them and smiled guilelessly.

"I knew you'd be here," she said cheerfully. "You've come to take me away, because that is what you were told to do. Do you know why?"

The Leader ignored her and gestured for the rest of the men to gather in closer. None of them seemed inclined to listen to a nine-year-old.

"They're going to lock me up. In a bed, where I will never wake. They will watch my dreams on television and use them to help people – for the greater good. But I will be in pain. The Dream-Watcher will have to hurt me. For the greater good.

"And know this, Armoured Men." Her voice hardened, and it was unnervingly adult for such a small person. "You understand precious little about what you work for. If I were you, I would stop before it gets too deep for even you. Killing innocents, kidnapping children. What has become of you? You who were once so mighty."

A soft thumping noise sounded as a sedative-laced dart pierced her skin.

"Sorry," said one of the Armoured Men. "Finger slipped."

The Leader gave him a look that said he didn't believe a word the man was saying.

Chapter 1

Apollo

"Father, I really must disagree with your judgement. It's not like she's one of us – not like she is anything more than mortal. We should just leave her where she is. She's doing the human world a lot of good, and because they're reading her, the whole 'we don't believe her' issue has vanished. Why can't she just stay where she is?" Apollo demanded, having dispensed with formality and talking openly to his father as if the god couldn't kill him with a word.

Zeus drummed his fingers against the armrest of his throne and eyed his son thoughtfully. "I believe you are scared."

"Please, father," Apollo replied, rolling his eyes sarcastically. "I'm just thinking of the time and effort we could save by leaving her where she is!"

"No, my boy. Not the time and effort we could save. The time and effort you could save. You are responsible for her predicament, and you will get her out of it. Or I may just set Cerberus on you. Do you understand?"

"I still don't see why-"

"And you the god of prophecy. Such a lack of insight. Go, before I decide that you aren't necessary to the continued existence of the world."

Apollo gave a cursory bow, then strode out of the throne room. He was not happy about this turn of events. He did not want to help someone who had inherited the curse he had rightfully bestowed so many centuries before. Likely the descendant would be just as proud and icy cold as Cassandra herself had been. Beautiful, yes, but harsh and unwelcoming.

Rashel

Rashel was all too aware that there were two of her – the dreamer and the walker. While her body, the dreamer, slept and dreamt of disasters over the world, and matters of international security, her consciousness, manifested like a ghost into a vague image of what she looked like, wandered the Earth, visiting all sorts of places and listening to many different conversations. She had looked for heaven and found nothing, but had spoken to ghosts who had been there and returned.

Talking to mediums was always interesting because, aside from their being the only living beings that could see her, they never knew quite what to make of her. She was an enigma – not quite alive, but far from dead. She had a living, physical body, but no attachments to it.

Once, she had searched the present world for disaster and prodded her dreaming self into viewing it for the Dream Watcher, but nothing had been done. They were only concerned about predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, terrorist attacks and assassinations. Major things that they would be given credit for.

From time to time she followed around the mercenary ex-SAS group Tango-Delta, who she had originally referred to as the Armoured Men, in the hope of finding out something about her captivity, but she never did for long because what they did was so abhorrent.

She was following them once more, hoping that she would learn something before they got into the bloody business of murder, when she felt a sharp tug on the back of her neck. The physical sensation was unnerving because she was incorporeal, and when she turned around there was no one there. She walked out through the walls and floated along the streets, trying to find the source of the discomfort.

It happened again, but this time it didn't stop. It was incredibly forceful, and she was pulled off of her feet. Someone was dragging her backwards through space to some unknown place.

Apollo

He had been right. Despite the fact that she was slightly emaciated, she was very much a beautiful woman, and very much as stubborn as he would have expected. Psychically pulling her consciousness out of Texas and back to her body deep inside an English research facility was taking more time than he would have imagined. She was struggling like a wild thing. Anyone would think she didn't want to be rescued.

Apollo gave up when he got her to the Atlantic Ocean and released her, not wanting to spend any longer on something that was proving so difficult. He decided that she would probably return to her body once the sedative was out of her system.

Besides, the man who watched all of her dreams on television was starting to wake up, and Apollo didn't to have to knock him unconscious again. He pulled the needle, the one that constantly pumped drugs and sustenance into her bloodstream, out of her wrist, and none-too-gently removed the electrodes and needles recording her REM waves. She hadn't been very co-operative, so why should he take too much care over her?

He lifted her limp body up and rested her over his shoulder, teleporting them out to the suite he had hired in London. It was big and luxurious – surely they wouldn't bump into each other too often once she was awake?

Zeus had somehow managed to blackmail him into agreeing to looking after the woman for a month or so until she fully acclimatised to consciousness. He hadn't been happy about it – he still wasn't happy about it – but he had no choice in the matter. Even his mother had been roped into forcing him to agree to this torture. Apparently he was supposed to feel some sort of guilt for cursing a member of Rashel's family millennia ago.

He dumped the woman unceremoniously on the bed, not even bothering to put her into some semblance of a comfortable position before he teleported back up to Olympus to see if he could persuade his father to cut down on the look-after-her period. He had rescued her – wasn't that enough?