NewU Pt. 14

I looked at his hand. The simple, unmistakable truth was that I didn't trust him. I didn't trust anybody. My eyes flicked hesitantly up to Charlotte. She smiled and nodded as the memory of her voice echoed through my mind.

I have known them all my life. I trust them.

With a deep breath, I reached out and took his hand. As soon as I did, existence melted away.

********

I blinked as I looked around. With the exception of the Conclave's cathedral, I had only ever materialized into the mindscape in one of two places. Either inside my city or just outside it in the lush, green meadow. Charlottes had been the only other city I had been in; technically, you could say I had been inside Rhodri's during the duel at the party, but I had literally been only a few feet inside his walls and was kind of busy at the time. I wasn't sure that counted. This, however, was very, very different.

I stared in wide-eyed wonder as I looked around the scene before me, probably looking just as awe-struck as most people did when they first saw my city. Charlotte, looking equally shocked, slid up next to me and slipped her hand reassuringly next to mine. Of all the things around me, her presence with me in this place was the least surprising thing about it.

"I didn't expect him to bring you here," She whispered to me. "I don't think I've even heard of an outsider being allowed here.

Buildings, all of them looking like they had been pulled out of the mid-1700s, stretched for as far as the eye could see. Even compared to my city, this place was enormous. Yet I could tell it wasn't a city. We were still in the mindscape, or at least a version of it. The Conclave had their cathedral; the Sect had this. There were no walls, no functional buildings like the palace or the library, and there were no ghosts - the phantom-like representations of people who had made an impact on a person's life that inhabited a city. Between the buildings, around the simple cobblestone streets that intersect them, was something that I suddenly realized I had never seen in a city before, not even my own. Grass.

The meadow of the mindscape was a black canvas. A lush and verdant field on which anything could be built, battles could be fought, or love could be made. But once inside a city, everything had a function. There was absolutely zero wasted space. Even in my own city, with its broad, tree-lined avenues separating tall and expansive apartment blocks, all of it had a function. The streets represented travel around my mind. The breadth of a street represented its capacity to carry information. The apartment blocks were placeholders for my mind's ability to grow. Plazas were a physical manifestation of the core memories around which my psyche had developed. It was grand, it was imposing, it was on a scale that dropped the jaws of almost everyone who had seen it. Yet all of it was functional.

This was different. I had never worked out what the trees in my city represented. Perhaps they were purely decorative, or maybe they suited a purpose, but this place seemed to have been built with decoration and wide, open spaces as part of its makeup.

Each building seemed to be on its own plot of land. Each plot of land was filled with decorative trees and well-manicured flower beds. Each blossom, every tree, and every blade of grass felt vibrant and alive. Like each one was a node on a massive synaptic web.

Between the buildings and the gardens and the flowers, there were people.

Lots and lots of people

Hundreds of them.

What was more, I could immediately tell that they were all real people, real minds, just as I could at the party. Those soft caresses of curious minds reaching out to investigate my own, and mine reaching out to theirs.

"Welcome to the Sect," the man said, stepping in from behind me. "The Conclave prides themselves on power; it is how they define their place, not only within the Order but in the world. Here, we don't measure the strength of the individual but of the community as a whole. Each one of us adds something to the collective, and as such, the collective..." he gestured his arm out to the scene around us, "...represents each one of us. This place is part of all of us, and, as such, each of us gives a part of ourselves to it."

I turned my head to look at him. His face was smiling softly with pride at what they had built. Looking the other way, I found Charlotte's face smiling happily as her hand gave mine the softest of squeezes. Looking back ahead, I started to notice that, just like it had in the Conclave, my presence had been noticed, and a multitude of faces all turned to look at me. Warm, smiling, happy faces contrasted the memory of nervous curiosity that had washed through the Cathedral at my arrival a week earlier.

"Please, come with us to the Great Hall," The man said, directing me to a large central structure a little way ahead of us, "The council are ready for us to join them there." I nodded and allowed him to lead the way.

There was an enormous difference in the way that the other people within this township reacted to me as I passed compared to how the lower ranks of the Conclave had. During the party and while at the Cathedral, every tendril that stroked at my city walls was trying to measure me, working on trying to gain a full appreciation of the size of my walls and the full extent of my power. The only exception had been Faye. At no point had Faye felt like she was even remotely interested in how powerful I was, except indirectly when she had been cheering me on during the duel with Rhodri? She had been interested in me.

These people, although their interest was nowhere near as intimate, were very similar in their intent. The measure of my power was little more than a curiosity to them. What really mattered to the masses of Sect members was my character, who I was as a man and as an Evo.

It was a good question, one that I had never really thought to ask myself before. At that moment, walking through those streets, I was a ball of paranoid, vengeful, sorrowful rage. I had been lied to, manipulated, and robbed of the love of my life. I was the hunter and the butcher of Inquisitors, I was the man who would destroy the Conclave, obliterate the Inquisition and bring down the Sect with less than a moment's hesitation if it meant avenging my Faye. Yet, at the same time, I knew that this is not who I wanted to be, certainly not how I would want to be seen, and not the man that Faye would have wanted me to become.

Despite that, I had chosen my path and would see it through to its end. I would avoid violence if I could, but I would meet it with the full weight of force I could muster if I could not.

They say it is better to be on the right side of the devil than to be in his way...

Perhaps this was what the Sect was trying to do.

The Great Hall was as aesthetically muted and non-expressive as the rest of the buildings in the collective. As wondrous and beautiful as the collective was, the architecture was basic at best. The township was not filled with a city's normal buildings, just homes, and yet they seemed to be built with function over fashion in mind. Four walls, a roof, a few windows, and a door. That was it. The Great Hall followed the same logic; it was just bigger. It was hard to reconcile the splendor and grandeur of the mansion in the real world with the understated nature of all the buildings in the Sect's home. Out front, however, was an elaborate, carved white-marble statue. Three naked cherubs, their eyes to the sky, spurting water into the air from their lips. The three streams fell gently back into the fountain's base. If the township could be said to have a center, the fountain, rather than the Great Hall, was it.

The three of us walked past it, listening to the tinkling splashes of the water hitting the pool, before we climbed the few steps and into the Great Hall. Inside, a large oval wooden table, easily large enough to fit twenty people, sat in the center of a large room. Upper balconies hung over each side of the room, allowing people in the galleries to observe the proceedings, but these looked to be empty today. Around the table were large, cushioned wooden chairs, and all but three of them were occupied. Men and women, none of them appearing - outwardly at least - to be under the age of fifty, all stood from their chairs as we entered. Although I had no idea who these people were as individuals, I deduced that these were the Sect elders.

I could also tell that they were not standing as a sign of respect to the man who had led us in, nor to the relatively low-ranked Charlotte. They were standing as a welcome to me.

The man took his seat at the head of the table, Charlotte taking the empty seat to his right while I took the only remaining option on his left. "Please, Mr. Roberts, place your hands on the table." The man said with a friendly and warm smile. I looked over to Charlotte, who already had the palms of her hands resting on the oaken tabletop. I rested my hands on the surface and watched as the rest of the council moved in front of their seats and did the same.

A wash of power ran over me, nothing - I instinctively knew - to be worried about; it was just unexpected. But in half a heartbeat, I suddenly knew everything I needed to know about every member of the council. Likewise, they knew everything they needed to know about me. Nothing in-depth, they didn't have access to my memories, nor could they bypass my defenses, but they knew enough to understand who I was... just like I could understand that, at least on the surface, I was among friends.

The man who had led us in was called Arthur; he was the declared leader of the council and its spokesman. Yet he was also one of the newest members, only having served on it for the past seven years. More than that, he was by far the youngest council member at only - only - ninety-eight years young. The oldest and longest-serving member of the council was an honor that belonged to a woman named Agatha. She had been an old lady at the time of the Schism and was clocking in at almost 400 years old, and had been one of the primary fighters of the resistance before they had broken away from the Conclave. She had helped to found the Sect after the separation, had been one of the main combatants against the attacks they had assumed came from the Conclave, and had helped to set up the very council on which she now sat. She had served on the board ever since. She had never served as, nor sought the position of, leader of the council.

In no way a guaranteed position; each member was able to be voted off by the rest of the council if they did something disagreeable. Agatha just never had. The man directly across from her, Matthew, was her grandson. Far from being an act of nepotism that earned him his seat, Agatha had actually voted against it, saying that one of them should stand down from their chair if only to avoid even the appearance of favoritism within the Sect leadership. Matthew had taken the place of Charlotte's late grandfather and had been serving for only a year longer than Arthur. Perhaps more apt for this meeting, the man that Arthur had replaced had been killed by an Inquisitor.

"Thank you, Pete," Agatha said as, one by one, the council members absorbed the knowledge about me and opened their eyes. "After Charlotte showed us what happened to you at the party, I would like to be the first to offer my deepest, most heartfelt condolences. We here have all lost at the hands of the Inquisition. It is a pain I would wish on no man." There was a wave of rolling head nods as the other members added their weight to the sentiment.

I nodded my thanks before answering. "I'm not sure that it was."

Agatha tilted her head in confusion. "I do not understand," she said with a frown and briefly wondered if her sympathies had offended me. "Not sure that it was what?"

"I don't think it was at the hands of the Inquisition," I clarified.

A murmur rippled around the table, and a few glances were exchanged between the members.

"What do you mean it wasn't the Inquisition?" Agatha asked with a frown. "You saw them."

"Who else could it be?" someone else said

"I'm not sure we understand what you mean, Pete," It was Arthur who spoke this time.

I flashed a look over to Charlotte. She shook her head at me. "I haven't shown them that yet. They have only seen the party."

"Oh, well, that makes more sense." I'm not sure why I was so surprised. Charlotte had not left my side since showing her Miguel's revelation, and we had come straight here. Perhaps I thought she had shared it with them before the meeting began, but now I could see the flaw in my logic, and none of these people had a clue what I was talking about. I turned back to Arthur. "I think you all have a little catching up to do."

********

There was a look of abject shock on the faces of every council member as they opened their eyes. I had shared everything with them, just like I had with Charlotte. There was silence for a long few minutes, each of them processing, through the prisms of their own experiences, what they had learned. More than a few of them could still remember the fighting of the War of 1812; almost all of them had known, or had been related to, people who had been lost. But not one of them had ever considered that those attacks had not been carried out by the Conclave, let alone entertained the idea that the Conclave had actually fought ferociously hard to protect them. They had known these people from before the Schism; they had all been members of the Conclave together. When those familiar faces attacked them, they just put two and two together and expected to come up with four. It had never even occurred to them that there had been another split.

The peace accords signed in Philadelphia was also completely new information to them. They had no idea. I had wondered, in the time since my time with Miguel, why the Sect was not invited or included in the talks. Now the council was wondering the same thing. But, like me, the most concerning part of the revelations revolved around the supposed ongoing communications between the Conclave and the Inquisition and the implication that at least some of the deaths attributed to the Inquisitors over the past 200 years were, in fact, Conclave sanctioned.

They didn't even know where to start dissecting the former existence of Reinard Montreaux. The general concept of a Royal made sense to them, but the idea that one had gone rogue and was responsible for the attack on the party seemed to only add fuel to the confusion about previous Inquisition attacks.

And also, like me, they didn't even try to convince themselves that Miguel had been lying. They could see as easily as I could that he had been telling the truth.

"So, is it true?" Charlotte was the first to speak. "Did the Sect intentionally start the War of Independence?"

The entire council turned to look at Agatha. The aged lady just sighed and nodded. "It's true. It was a different time, back then, my child. Politics was not what it is now, only the landowners had a vote, and the common man had no say at all. Let alone women. We could see what the country could become, but it would never happen under the yolk of the Conclave controlled British. The war was inevitable. We just lit the fuse before the British were ready. We gave the revolutionaries a fighting chance."

"Then why isn't that part of our history?" Charlotte pressed.

Agatha paused for another long moment. "Nations, especially ones like the UK and the US, alter their own histories to make themselves look better. Britain forgets that they were the ones who invented the concept of the concentration camp during the Boer War, just like they don't teach their children about the crimes committed during their occupation of India. The Americans convinced themselves that they had won World War II with the dropping of the bomb when the use of nuclear weapons had almost nothing to do with Japan's surrender. They surrendered when the Russians invaded Manchuria. They knew they would get better terms from the West. That was it. Russia doesn't teach its children about the Pogroms that were happening in their country decades before Hitler came along, and the Japanese, to this day, refuse to acknowledge the atrocities carried out in Nanking. No society likes to be seen as the bad guy by its own people. We were no different. We were... we were wrong."

Charlotte nodded slowly but remained silent, as did the rest of the elders.

"Pete, Charlotte, the council is going to need some time to discuss this," Arthur finally said. "You have given us a lot to think about."

I nodded, already half expecting something like this, and made to stand up. "Before you leave, Pete...." Agatha said, pulling her aged body from her chair as I did. "Could I have a moment of your time in private?"

"Of course, Councilwoman," I answered after flashing a glance to Charlotte. She smiled and nodded, then left the hall as Agatha directed me over to one corner.

"I truly am sorry about Faye," she started, suddenly looking very somber. "But for more reasons than you know. Genetic inheritance of the Evo gene is rare, but it happens. Faye was my great-great-grand-neice. My sister never joined us during the Schism; she was killed by an Inquisitor a few decades after the split, and I never got to see her again. Faye was her Great Granddaughter."

"I'm... I'm sorry to hear that," I said.

"You haven't been back to your city since the party, have you?" She asked, a sad smile on her face.

I thought about it for a moment. "Actually, no, I haven't. I spent a week in my bunker, but I haven't actually been inside my city."

"You had started the bonding process; you became part of each other. Not completely, but certainly enough."

"Certainly enough for what?" I frowned.

Agatha reached out and took my hand. "Enough for her to be there waiting for you, my child."

********

And that's a wrap for chapter 14.

The plot is thickening; with no idea who he can trust, Pete is muddling and stumbling through the tempest of grief and paranoia with little sense of direction. But his quest to find answers is not far away from bearing fruit.

Thank you for your comments and feedback. It never ceases to amaze me how supportive and receptive the readers of lit can be. I look forward to hearing what you think of this, and my other story - The Island - in the comments or on the Discord Server.

Stay Awesome.

Nova