NewU Pt. 17

But Jaques did it. He drained his friend, he emptied his library, and he pulled every single shred of knowledge and power out of a man he would have died to protect but no longer could. The closest thing to a brother he had ever had.

He then watched as Matthias slipped away. The fog of his last long breath drifted into nothingness in the cold night air.

Jacques took a deep breath and stood. His new memories, especially of Matthias's flight from the Cathedral of Notre Dame, had been as incredible as they had been heroic. He could see, in his mind's eye, the moment when his friend had willingly chosen to sacrifice his life for the cause for which they were now fighting. He would carry those memories for the rest of his life, and then, once this war against the rot within the Conclave had been won, he would donate them to the archives so that all would be able to understand what true heroism looked like.

He said a silent prayer over the body of his friend and then turned and headed toward the city center. The next train was due in an hour, and he had to be in London by the next afternoon at the very latest.

He trudged his way toward the glow of light from the city. Snow began to fall, quickly layering the ground in a thin dusting of soft, crisp whiteness. Jacques had always loved the snow; there was something clean and pure about it. His trudging was now sung back to him as his footsteps crunched against the snow.

But, he quickly came to realize, his were not the only footsteps echoing around him.

He slowed, his hand in one pocket thumbing over the envelope that Matthias had given his life to transport, while the other hand in the other pocket fingered at the butt of his Enfield Mk. I pistol. It wasn't the most powerful of weapons, but it would do the job at close range.

Taking a leaf from Matthias's book, he slowed to light a cigarette, taking the opportunity to cast a look behind him. A lone man was walking closer, not really paying any attention to him nor surrounded by that tell-tale white aura. Jacques relaxed his grip on his weapon.

Yet there was something oddly familiar about the man, like he had seen him before. In his mid to late forties, maybe even his fifties, his greying hair was offset by the well-worn look of his face. Deep wrinkles were set in around his eyes as if the man spent far too much time faking a smile.

"Bonjour," Jacques smiled politely, stepping aside to let the man pass.

He barely noticed that the man had something in his hand. Or at least he didn't notice until the man leaped forward and drove the sharp blade of that something into the soft flesh under Jacques's jaw, through the cavity of his mouth, and into his brain.

Jacques gargled around the blood that was quickly flowing down his throat as his hand frantically scrambled in his pocket for a grip on the pistol. "Ah, ah, ah," the familiar-looking man said in a voice that sounded just as familiar as his face still looked. "We won't be having any of that."

The man reached into Jacques's pocket and removed the pistol, giving it a quick look before tucking it into his own. He then rummaged through Jacques's other pocket and pulled out the envelope. Jacques's eyes widened as the man glanced at it, turned it over in his hands, and tossed it casually over his shoulder.

The only hope of averting a war that could destroy the continent, cost millions of lives, and expose the betrayal at the heart of the Conclave, landed in the frigid, midnight-black waters of the Seine and slowly floated out of sight.

"I will make this quick, I promise, my brother." The man said as he pressed his hand onto Jacques' forehead. The last thought that passed through Jacques' mind was the horror of recognition as he finally realized who his murderer was, the utter savagery the fates had shown him by letting him be killed by someone who wasn't even involved in this fight, and the sorrow he felt that Matthias's memories had been stolen along with his, never to be seen by those they loved most. Those they gave their lives to defend.

Jacques was drained, his palace destroyed, and his library emptied. The knife was savagely ripped to the side. He let out a slight gasp of pain as his throat was opened, and the familiar-looking man whistled as he turned and disappeared into the night.

Jacques felt the last of his life slip away. The darkness faded over his vision as his body was slowly covered in snow.

Jacques always loved the snow.

********

Uri blinked his eyes clear and looked around the mindscape. It had taken days of me sifting through Sterling's memories before I found this one; it had barely been a hunch to start with. With Sterling being easily old enough to have been alive at the time the Philadelphia accords were signed, I had started going through his memories to see what he knew of them. It turned out he knew nothing. He didn't have a clue about them. More than that, he had no knowledge whatsoever about the communication between the Conclave and the Inquisition, and although he had a vague understanding of High-Inquisitors, the existence of the Royals, let alone rogue ones, would have come as much of a surprise to him as it had to me. Not being put off by this, and with Sterling holding the cumulative knowledge and memories of all of his victims, I had started to browse them to see if they had any better information. It was during that investigation that I stumbled across this memory.

It wasn't just flashing images, sounds, and smells; it was more than the recollection of a series of events. I could feel what Matthias had felt; the fear, the adrenaline, the cold air on his skin, and, more importantly, the abject mistrust of the Conclave. He had died trying to pass information on to Jacques, information concerning what he called "the rot" within the Conclave. Jacques was to take that information to London where, both men hoped, it would expose the truth behind the betrayal by their leaders and prevent what I assumed would later become the First World War. They had failed, and they had given their lives in the process. When Sterling had ambushed and murdered Jacques, he had stolen his memories, along with the ones Jacques had taken from the dying Matthias, and it was those memories that I had just finished playing for Uri.

We were both in the mindscape, and although we were actually in completely different parts of the world, this was the closest thing to teleconferencing that Evos had. "So, we aren't the only people to have stumbled onto this threat," Uri nodded slowly. "At least one other group did in Paris, sometime in February 1888. The hostile faction of the Inquisition tried to stop them, but they got away, only for Sterling to use that attack as a disguise for his attack on them. This could be helpful."

I nodded for him to continue. There was something about reliving that memory that made me feel unbearably cold, and I had watched it a dozen times in the past few days to make sure I had my information straight, and each time had left me with the need to warm myself up.

"It shouldn't be hard to find out who Jacques and Matthias were, and Claude, we may even be able to trace their movements back to find out where they got this information and, ideally, what it was. But I wouldn't hold out too much hope."

"No, I'm guessing that whoever else was involved with this group was killed too. Otherwise, it wouldn't have disappeared." I agreed.

Uri nodded again. "But there should be some record of them in our archives. Who they were, what they were working on, and maybe retracing their steps would be a good way to find out what they knew. Again, there may be people still alive who knew them. I will look into this 'Annie' as well. The other thing worth looking into is why they were so keen to get to London. What was there that was so important in 1888?"

"The entrance to the Conclave Cathedral?"

Uri shook his head, his eyes staring into the middle distance as he thought. "No, there is an entrance to the Conclave in Paris, close to the Bastille. They would have known about that. There has to be something else. I will see what I can find."

"What about Sterling?"

"Oh, he will be mined for information, and then he will be dealt with appropriately."

"No, I meant his body. I dragged his mind to the Conclave. The rest of him is still sitting on my kitchen floor. Given a choice, I would rather not keep him there."

"Oh, right, yes. I will send Fiona and Jerry to pick him up. They have been briefed on the situation already, and they are chasing down some leads."

"Anything you want to share?"

"Not yet They haven't found anything, but I will let you know if they do."

I narrowed my eyes at him. There was still something he wasn't telling me. "And Marco?"

"I have Marco checking in on all the people who made it out of the party."

There was something.... Off... about the way he said that. "You haven't told him about the rest of it yet, have you?"

Uri arched an eyebrow at me. "I will inform him when I think it's necessary. Fiona and Jerry needed to know to complete their task. Marco doesn't need to know anything to check in on your local members, but I will bring him up to speed if the need arises."

"I thought you said you trusted them."

"No, I said that trust was a rare commodity these days. You assumed I trusted them because I was bringing them into the loop. None of them will know more than they absolutely need to do their jobs."

"And that includes me."

"I'm glad to see that you are learning."

I took a deep breath and, once again, fought the urge to call him a cunt. "Fine! But I hope you know that works both ways."

"We shall see. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. I will smooth things over with the Archon."

"I'm overjoyed. Can't you tell?" I deadpanned him.

"And I'm sure Marco will be in touch soon," Uri continued as if I had said nothing. "Most of the more recent of Sterlings victims were in his area. He was personally involved in the hunt. I'm certain he will be grateful. Let me know if you find anything out about the flight." He finished.

"We shall see." I echoed back to him, mirroring the disapproving stare that he leveled at me.

"I will speak to you soon, Pete." And with that, he severed the connection. I growled quietly at the empty spot in the mindscape before letting it fade away and returning to my apartment.

Sterling was still sitting on my kitchen floor, leaning up against the island counter where I had left him. To the outside observer, it looked like he was just daydreaming; there wasn't a mark on him. The battered and bloodied version of him I had dumped onto the floor of the Cathedral had suffered almost unimaginable horrors, but his physical body was completely unharmed.

Imagine if someone were capable of making you feel the sensation of being burned alive without ever actually burning you, making you feel what it was like to have your fingernails ripped off or your toes crushed with a hammer or having entire strips of skin peeled off you, having your eyes gouged out, your teeth pulled, and every single one of your nerve endings found and pierced by a red hot needle, but had done so without ever actually touching you. That is what I had done to Sterling. That and so much worse. The wounds visible to the members of the Conclave were wounds inflicted upon his psyche, not his body. I had broken that man in every way it was possible to break someone.

I sat on one of the stools and just looked at him.

It was strange how the whole Evo mindscape thing worked. I hadn't really dragged his mind into the Cathedral. To do that, I would have had to have taken it out of his body, and although I wasn't entirely sure if that was possible or not, it hadn't seemed productive. Parts of that mind were needed to keep his body alive, and although having a catatonic stranger on my kitchen floor might not be a good look, having a dead one there would be significantly harder to explain. Instead, what I had basically done was create a link between the Cathedral and Sterling's mind. By interacting with the link, the Evos in the Conclave were able to interact directly with Sterling's mind. Or what he had left of it, anyway.

There was a level of disgust and disdain in my feelings toward the man that burned right to the core of me every time I looked at him. The way he had attacked me, his motivations, and his methods had been incredibly personal and intimate. Thinking back to the time we had spent in his illusion, there were only a limited number of ways he could have gained access to the information that he had. Knowing about Uri could be as easily explained as seeing us talking at the party. If a predator of Sterling's caliber had been able to hunt me successfully, then Uri would have been another logical target. More concerning were the references, albeit brief ones, to the nurses. The only way he could have gotten them was by reading my memories. He had, after all, been inside my city, which meant that he had as much access to me as I had to him. What worried me was that I felt nothing. It was only a lazy guess about my parents that had caught him out, but if he had access to the information about Becky and Philippa, how did he not have access to the details of my relationship with my parents? Hell, he had literally walked past effigies to them on his way to the power plant. If he had gotten that one detail right, I couldn't honestly say I would have snapped out of it.

Of everything that had happened, after watching the dozens of times he had ambushed, tricked, or simply attacked other Evos, all of them much more experienced than me, and being successful, after all the things I had seen and experienced, that was the part that made me feel most uncomfortable.

It was the first time I had been made to feel truly vulnerable since I had come to grips with my powers.

It was not a feeling I was fond of.

I stood up and gave Sterling a kick. Did it serve a purpose? Not at all. Did it help alleviate that feeling of vulnerability? Not even a little. Did it make me feel a little better? Yes. Yes, it did. So I kicked him again.

I spent the next few hours staring at him, mulling over everything in my head. Not just everything that had happened during his failed attempt at murdering me, but everything. Faye, the party, the Inquisition, the Conclave, the Sect, The Royals, Marco, Uri, Charlotte, Montreaux, Miguel's revelations, Agatha's confirmation of at least part of it, the investigation into the rest, Faye's residence in my city, my new friendly neighborhood mole. All of it.

I felt the weight of it all resting firmly on my shoulders. A weight that was usually borne by armies or institutions, or at least world leaders. I was a twenty-year-old kid from the back end of nowhere, and I was suddenly playing the most dangerous game imaginable with the most dangerous people on earth.

What the fuck was I doing?

There was a part of me, no matter how small, no matter how quiet that voice whispered, that wished that Sterling's illusion was my reality. Just myself and my own well-being to worry about. No power, no responsibilities, no obligations, no danger. Just me. I could pretend I was Billy Badass all I liked, but when it came down to it, I was fucking scared.

I kicked Sterling again. It helped a little.

I took a deep breath, stood from my stool, and rolled my neck as I turned to look out of the huge living room window and over the valley beyond. The sun was starting to set over the western mountains. It was hard to fathom how a single day could seem so long. I had only met with Uri that morning, I had only arrived back from Malaga, and met the Sect yesterday, yet both of those points in time felt like a lifetime ago. Perhaps it was because I literally had the lives of three or four dozen other people rattling around in my head. They weren't the sort of memories I would confuse with my own, they weren't always there, but I seemed able to access and browse them at leisure. Those memories, along with the rest of Sterling's, would be something I would spend a great deal of time working through soon. Perhaps it was because of all that extra power I had absorbed. I hadn't gone into my city to look for myself, but Jeeves had told me that a new power plant had sprung up close to the center of my city, making my already unimaginable power reserves even less imaginable. Whatever it was, it was messing with my concept of time and my concept of time was already more than a little sketchy due to the dilating effects of my city and my bunker. This was just making it worse.

Fuck! I needed a drink.

I was interrupted by a knock on the door. Call it experience, call it an overabundance of caution, call it whatever you like, but this time, I let my mind reach out to see who was on the other side before I made my way over to open it.

"Hi, Pete," Fiona smiled nervously as I opened the door for them. Jerry nodded his greeting from next to her. "Uri sent us."

"That was quick," I said with my best fake smile as I stepped aside to let them in.

"We were in the area," Jerry answered as they both stepped past me.

"That doesn't sound ominous at all."

"It's nothing to worry about," Fiona said, trying her best to sound reassuring. "We needed to chase up a few leads from the party."

"Oh? I thought Uri said Marco was doing that."

"No, Marco is following up with the other guests," Jerry answered again. They seemed to be taking turns speaking. It was very off-putting. "We were looking into the venue and the aftermath. Did you notice that there was nothing on the news about it at all? One hundred and forty-something people were killed, and nothing. Even if they blamed the whole thing on a gas leak, covering it up to that level shouldn't be possible. So we are trying to find out how." They were both standing around - and looking down at - Sterling. "Jesus, I can't believe he had the wool so firmly pulled over everyone's eyes."

"Fucking asshole," Fiona spat. "Can he move, or are we going to have to carry him?"

"Sterling, get up and follow these two," I said to the living corpse that had once been my attacker. There honestly wasn't much left of him by this point. The vengeful God who I had read about in the bible as a child would have beamed with pride or seethed in jealous fury at the fire and brimstone I had rained down on Sterling. It was the sort of stuff that would have given Freddie Krueger nightmares.

Perhaps the most concerning part of my current state of mind was that thinking of all the immense pain and unimaginable suffering I had inflicted on Sterling; I regretted none of it.

Sterling pulled himself robotically and absently to his feet.

"I honestly thought he had been killed in the attack," Fiona said, staring at the man she had last seen after his victory over her in the duel. "I mean, it's pretty clear now. He just shifted his appearance to something different and fucked off before the attack started. When we couldn't account for him afterward, we assumed the worst. I can't believe I actually grieved for this piece of shit."

"I just can't get over the way he killed so many of us," Jerry agreed. "I was pretty shocked by the twelve left in those vegetative states, but he found a way to completely disguise himself from the rest of us and then used that ability to murder other Evos. Its..."

"Cannibalism," Fiona finished. "He hunted and fed on his own. And all in the name of growing his own power. There is nothing worst than that"

I refrained from pointing out the parallels between Sterling and the way the Conclave had historically sought power.

Jerry rested a hand on her shoulder. "Let's get him out of here and back to base. Then we can forget that he ever existed."