Chapter 27: Deal With the Devil
The Overseer stood the middle of a dirt path.
To his left were vast woodlands and glades, extending beyond sight. To his right was an incline curving up to a grassy field; the ruins of a castle could be seen in the distance, built atop the far end of the vaguely L-shaped rise that enclosed part of the field. Behind him, the dirt path extended for kilometers, leading further south into Bavaria.
Before him, at a distance of fifteen feet, were found one black armored van, two black Rolls-Royce Phantoms, and eight individuals. Three were ordinary humans; four others were bald and lacking eyebrows.
The last was a frightened child.
It was here, at sundown, that the two parties stared each other down.
Resting his hands on his cane, Mercedony recalled the events that had led him to that moment.
He had not been able to relocate Isen since the night he had disappeared from Für Immer, leaving only his baseball cap behind. He spread word of Isen's status as a top-priority target on the Proxy network, and created a specialized Proxy task force to enter a full-time search for the boy. The initiative had yielded no results.
The odds might have increased if he had informed his Witnesses of Isen's escape, but he did not dare place more stress on his agents, seeing what telling them of the Guardians had done. And now that the first open altercations had taken place – as it came to his attention with February's skirmish over three weeks ago – he wondered how long he could juggle the tasks of enacting the Directive and dealing with the Guardians before one or the other started to suffer.
Judging by how fast events were unfolding, he suspected the Caretaker intended to test him to his limits.
It was his Warden he had sent as his emissary to Für Immer. Almost three weeks after Isen's disappearance – a time when he had all but abandoned the possibility of finding him again – Jacques had alerted him of a presence on the surface as Mercedony navigated the holographic seas of the Empyrean Interface. When Jacques had noted that the energy signatures of the uninvited guest were not within the parameters of ordinary humans, his hopes had shot up.
But as was most often the case, it was too good to be true. When Mercedony shifted at the castle gates, overlooking the field below, he saw not a diminutive figure, but a tall, lean one in a black trenchcoat.
Not knowing the nature of the Guardian's visit, Mercedony thought it wiser to hear him out, seeing that he was standing idle in the middle of the field in apparent wait. Since he would not be able to shift before his guest with the Guardian observing – and shifting behind him would do no good if the goal was diplomacy – he instead chose to walk down the hill to meet him, although at an accelerated temporal rate so as to bridge the distance in less than a second.
No Guardian had ever laid eyes upon the Overseer until that moment. The emissary's eyes had widened in disbelief at Mercedony's approach, something which he did not fault him for; after all, his was a face that most certainly reminded the Guardian of someone he knew quite well.
"I am Agent Sunday of the Brotherhood of the Guardians," stated the Guardian, "and Warden beneath the Caretaker. I come in peace."
What intimidation he felt in the Overseer's presence, this Sunday did not show. His arms were clasped behind his back, and he stood tall in his leather trenchcoat, silver buckles clamping it taut against his chest. His eyes were hard in his angular features, and the way he held himself suggested he occupied a significant role in the Brotherhood hierarchy; quite soon did Mercedony deduce that a Warden was to the Caretaker as his Arbiters were to him.
What is your business here, Guardian? This is no place for you.
Sunday switched to mental discourse when he received the message.
We have the boy Isen. He is with us at Voskresenie.
His leather gloves had curled around the head of his cane, creaking as the material stretched. The worst possible outcome had come to pass; the last place Mercedony wanted Isen was in Holiday's hands.
What have you done with him? Is he safe?
Yes. He is safe.
I demand that you release him to me at once.
That is why I have come. We are willing to return him to you. However, you must give us something in return.
What do you want?
Sunday thin lips widened to a smile.
You know what it is that we desire.
And so it was that five days later in the light of the setting sun, the Overseer was preparing to hand the Guardians his Beacon.
His first reaction had been refusal, of course. Did Holiday truly think he would surrender the Beacon so easily? He knew it was the Caretaker who had tried to take the Beacon in 1998, and again in 2008. He could not have used his Disciples or the Overseer would have suspected his involvement immediately, so Holiday turned to the North Woods Group instead, hiring a crew of Vanguard agents who would have otherwise never have gotten involved with the Beacon unless seduced by the prospect of earning the favour of the elusive Mister Holiday.
The presence of the NWG the first time had been puzzling, and their second had been even stranger; though when September reported the sighting of a Guardian at the Beacon's departure site, it all fell into place. And knowing the Beacon as intimately as Mercedony did, it had been easy for the Caretaker to deduce the eleven-year cycle that he employed for its deployment, to extrapolate future arrival sites from the patterns of previous appearances, and lastly, to realize that the worsening decay would force Mercedony to deploy it prematurely.
And he could achieve all this because he also knew the Overseer's mind intimately, how he thought and reacted, an intimacy that could only have formed after playing the game for so long.
It was why he was confident that the Overseer would consent to the exchange, even if only begrudgingly. Mercedony came to this realization himself over the three days between Sunday's offer and his return to hear the Overseer's decision.
Isen was perhaps the single most powerful child that had ever walked the Earth, in part because of his vast psionic potential, but primarily due to his connection to that accursed machine, which made him extremely dangerous by virtue of this tie. With the machine having long since been dismantled, Isen alone was nowhere near as powerful, just as hydrogen does not combust without a spark. Yet the boy could still become a volatile force on his own, especially if he were moulded to become a full-fledged Guardian, as Holiday had once tried to do.
Another Guardian would increase Holiday's advantage while diminishing Mercedony's own; and in this unending game, a single misstep would be his undoing.
In the end, the Overseer prioritized the success of the Directive over the Beacon.
He observed those who had come to treat with him. Sunday was present, countenance stern as ever. With him were three of his colleagues, Guardians who marvelled silently at the sight of the Overseer, the figure they had only heretofore been told about; one had multiple piercings, another had hands resplendent with rings, and the third had the hints of a large tattoo creeping up the side of his neck.
The apparent choice to encourage individuality in his Guardians was only surprising for a few moments. Unlike Witnesses, their methodology did not require them to become fully detached and impartial to everything including their inner selves, to become living manifestations of the Directive itself. He felt a twinge of regret that he had denied his Witnesses the chance to explore individuality, but it was necessary for the sake of the Directive, just as lowered emotional capacity was a necessary requisite in their creation to ensure observational objectivity (something the Caretaker clearly did not value as much).
Isen stood with Sunday's hands on his shoulders, holding him in place. He was wearing different clothing, having abandoned the clothes Joan Winick had given him in favour of nice jeans, shoes, and a horizontal-striped shirt of blues and blacks and whites. They must have told him to behave, too, for he was standing still, not trying anything brash. Though while he said nothing, the boy's state of mind was reflected with clarity on his face.
The Overseer ended their stand-off by speaking first.
Are you alright, Isen?
The boy nodded. They must have told him to remain quiet as well; either that, or his fear was stifling his ability to reply. Sunday's thoughts were heard next.
I presume that is the Beacon.
That it is.
The object Sunday referenced was standing at the Overseer's side. It was a black dodecahedron with a diameter of approximately three feet, comprised of twelve smaller versions of the frequency dampening disks arranged within the Beacon housing chamber. The top face had a handle affixed to it, and additional handlebars were pinned to each of the lower five faces.
Is it safe?
The casing fully shields the Beacon's frequency. If it did not, even I could not bear standing so close.
Sunday nodded.
Good. First, we will take the Beacon. Then, if it satisfies our expectation, we will release the boy.
Of course.
Despite Mercedony's assurances, Sunday sent the three black-clad Disciples present with him to fetch the case. The Disciples of the Brotherhood were Holiday's answer to the human Witnesses-by-Proxy network under Mercedony's employ, and like Proxies, Disciples acted not only as foot soldiers tending to the minutiae of the Brotherhood operation, but as spies and moles, information the Caretaker had shared with the Overseer one their rare crossing of paths since the inception of their ongoing enmity.
Like all humans, these three could not naturally see the Overseer; as far as they were aware, the Guardians had been standing and staring at the dodecahedron this whole time, oblivious to the silent conversation they were having with their hidden interlocutor. Though as they approached, Mercedony made himself known to them as a courtesy, projecting his image into their minds, and they were momentarily taken aback at the very faint, luminous silhouette their brains could just about interpret. But then they remembered who they worked for, and ignored the figure entirely as they went to work.
Heavier than it appeared, the Disciples lifted the case together by the handles and carried it back to the Guardians. Knowing the Beacon was inside, the Guardians reflexively took a few steps back at its approach, and Sunday stopped the Disciples a few feet from them. Tilting his head, the Warden directed the Guardian with the piercings to inspect the case. Hesitant, he inched forward, cringing, until he stopped before it. Not experiencing any adverse effects, he went ahead and placed a hand on the case itself, feeling the Beacon's vibrations coursing through it.
With a satisfied smile that revealed a golden tooth, he turned to the Warden and his comrades, who were also sporting grins.
To extract the Beacon, you need only push down on the top handle, twist clockwise, and pull up.
Excellent. Pleasure doing business, Mercedony.
Sunday let go of the boy.
The moment he did, Isen came running, kicking up dust with his urgent strides.
His eyes welling, he came crashing into Mister Richards, wrapping his arms around him, and Mercedony made no effort to stop him, placing a light hand on the boy's bald head as he watched the Disciples load the Beacon into the back of the van.
He didn't need to tell Isen that it was not Mercedony he saw in his resurging memories, but another.
An understandable mistake, seeing as they shared the same face.
The last pieces of the puzzle were set the moment Isen disappeared from the exam room in Für Immer. Those who called themselves Guardians had not been the Caretaker's first attempt; indeed, it was Isen and others like him. The Caretaker had gone back and kidnapped the most powerful group of children that had ever lived in his attempt to create agents superior to his own Witnesses. It was a theoretically sound plan; the brains of children, still not hardened by the wear and tear of the lived experience, made excellent candidates. Using children might not have been the most ethical approach, to be sure, but Mercedony bore no judgement on his adversary; after all, he had considered using children himself for the same reasons Holiday did.
Yet as the Overseer came to suspect – and as Holiday had learned after the fact – the vast potential inherent to a young mind had the trade-off of lack of structure and maturity, which ended up making Isen and the other Potentials inferior products. Something then must have happened – the Caretaker abandoned them, or they escaped the Nexus Point – and these proto-Guardians, rendered immortal, have been scattered around the globe for the past eight thousand years.
There was still one missing piece to the equation, though. In the year 5842 BCE, Mercedony had sensed a hiccup in time, history having shifted so minutely that it might well not even have changed at all. Something did change, however, and only now did Mercedony realize that it was Holiday going back to take the children. The question was how he managed to travel in time and interfere with the past without resetting the Linear Confluence Point – the forward-moving point where the future collapsed into the past, a point humans experienced as the present. He would have to ask him how he accomplished this impossible feat the next time they meet.
Whatever the case, a group of children had suddenly vanished from history, and until his recent dealings with Isen, he couldn't figure out why. One of the many mysteries of reality had been laid to rest.
The two watched the Disciples entering their vehicles, which had been parked on the side of the dirt path. The vehicles roared to life, and they navigated the narrow path to make a u-turn, forming a convoy, the van sandwiched fore and aft by the Phantoms. The caravan set out, beginning their journey back to Voskresenie in a haze of dust.
Mister Richards?
Yes, Isen?
Why give Beacon?
I had no choice if I wanted to bring you back.
While the decision had been mostly logistical, Mercedony could not deny it had also been informed by sentiment; he was strangely fond of the boy, so much so that he found himself stressing Isen's welfare in the internal deliberation that had led him to agree to the exchange.
Get it?
Mercedony looked down to Isen. The Beacon was merely was a capsule of Void Energy, and its resonance aided in the mending of the Veil. What use did the Caretaker have for it, other than using it as a healing agent the same way Mercedony had done? Apparently, the reason he desired the Beacon was strong enough to give up Isen, which troubled the Overseer and was at the source of his reluctance to part with the cylinder.
We will regain it, Isen. Not today, but soon.
After all, this was but a temporary setback. And the Caretaker no doubt expected the Overseer to come after him for the Beacon.
He wouldn't want to disappoint his old friend, now, would he?
He already had something to start with. If the Guardians had picked up the container themselves instead of sending their Disciples, he wouldn't have been able to read into their minds with ease and ascertain where they were intending to transport the Beacon. Had Voskresenie been in Sector-2 Ukraine all this time? An interesting choice.
One after the other, the Guardians, who still remained as the vehicles departed, turned and left themselves, leaving an explosion of dirt in their wake. Sunday was the last to depart, lingering few extra moments to savour their small victory, then he was gone also.
After the dust had settled, Isen heard the mental corollary of a sigh come from Mister Richards.
Come along, Isen. Are you up for walking?
The Overseer began to move forward, heading up the small incline that would lead to the field at the foot of Schloss Hohenberg. The boy did not follow, and when he noticed, Mercedony turned his head to see Isen's head slouched forward, and he was rubbing his arm.
Sorry for running, Mister Richards.
Mercedony offered him a weak smile.
It is quite alright, Isen. Let us head inside. Perhaps you might like to return to the Viewing Room. Much has happened in the past seventy years you were gone, and there is much catching up to do.
Um... Hot chocolate?
Of course. In fact, I think I might have some myself.
At an easy pace, they waded through the grass, neither of them in much of a hurry, choosing to take the scenic route. For the sooner they got back, the sooner Mercedony would have to start formulating plans on retrieving the Beacon. He wasn't looking forward to informing his Witnesses that he has lost the Beacon to the Guardians, either; they weren't fond of sudden changes. But such things could not be helped. Ascending the ancient, winding path up the hill to the castle ruins, he wondered if it might be best to summon them all to Für Immer.
The boy was close behind as they passed through the castle gates. Mercedony took the opportunity to probe Isen's mind. It was more stable than it once was now that much of the clutter of psychological repression and trauma had been cleared. Isen now knew how he ended up in his present condition, but there were still many memories that hovered beyond reach. He still did not remember Mercedony or where he himself came from. Should he tell him, or let the boy remember on his own? That was a question he would have to ponder later.
Down the central keep they went, into the stairs, down to the cellar, and through the illusory wall to Für Immer's elevator, where Jacques greeted them, enthused as ever.
Vishara Isen, he thought as they descended into the earth. You and I are responsible for so much. Perhaps it is better that you do not remember after all.
XxXxXxXxXxX
A/N: Dun dun duuun.
One chapter remains. As stated previously, it details the aftermath of the Liberation Front storyline. But other familiar faces appear, and our understanding of the Silent War will deepen. And of course, it sets the stage nicely for PTS IV.
I will post that two days from now (three at the most). And remember, any and all feedback is appreciated. :)
