Unity And Destiny Pt 04

Javier laid his head briefly on the steering wheel before getting out and walking to the farmhouse door. It turned out that missing a couple days of class and homework was no joke. Esther seemed to be catching up fine, but two days after their escape from Oregon he felt like he'd barely spent time with her. That first night, of course they'd been too exhausted for anything but sleep. And then it'd been chasing down one thing after another: missed notes, a make-up quiz, late homework, the works.

He didn't bother knocking, and anyway this was his place too. It was later than he'd meant, so he wasn't surprised to find Esther and Mark putting away dishes.

"How is she?" he asked, and of course Mark had that brief frowning hesitation. He doubted Nicola had exactly told him what had happened between them, but Mark wasn't stupid. How could Javier explain what that place had been like?

"She's better," Mark eventually said. "She doesn't want to talk much, though. Esther might know more. And I'm sure Nicola would like to see you."

It wasn't a rebuke. His friend just didn't think that way. But Mark was upset, no question, and probably didn't know exactly why, which was a difficult place for Mark.

Nicola did look better, sitting up in her guest room, reading a magazine with one leg over the side of her cushioned chair. Esther followed him in.

"Javier," Nicola said, smiling quickly. And then she glanced guiltily away, for just a second. What a mess.

"I was shopping," he said. "You know, there's a whole new line out for fall. Orange robes, would you believe it? I don't even know who they think their market is."

Nicola started to laugh, and she laughed a lot longer than it really deserved. She finally wiped her eyes on her sleeve and held out her hand. Javier gripped it tightly.

"Thank you, Javier," she said. "I never truly knew what a good friend you were."

She was trying to sort things out again with Mark, of course. A good friend. She'd said that as much for herself as for him.

"Nicola," he said, pausing. What could he say? All he could think of was her naked body, wreathed in mist in the mountain lake. "You'll get over this fine. We're all here for you."

She let go of his hand, not meeting his eyes. "I think I need Esther's help again. I'm better than last night, anyway. Thanks for stopping by, Javier."

He left them together, knowing the kind of intimacy Nicola secretly wanted with Esther. Esther had admitted last night how nervous it was all making her, that she didn't really know how to handle this right. And so after Javier had his late dinner, he lay alone on the bed for another hour and worried about how they could get things fixed up. Two happy couples again.

Esther finally came to bed, and she was slow to undress, preoccupied with whatever was happening in her ridiculously big brain. Javier wanted to make love to her, to clear the whole business out of his head. But putting off talking wouldn't help anything. She'd be protecting them from eavesdropping, even the accidental sort.

"Esther, I know Nicola and I weren't gone very long, but it's hard to explain. Being stuck there, just the two of us, with everyone around us brainwashed and Nicola terrified she was losing her mind—"

"I understand, Javier. You don't have to apologize."

"But I still have to tell you what actually happened. Don't I? I tried to take care of her, Esther, and I didn't want anything to be for my own pleasure, because that would have been taking advantage of her. But I think I did anyway."

Esther sighed and wriggled her body against him, squeezing a slim leg between his and resting her head on his chest.

"Nicola told me the gist of it," she said. "She feels terrible about putting you in that position. She told me you were the only reason she lasted as long as she did, and that she doesn't know how to explain to you what that means. And of course she has even less idea how to explain to Mark. I think she tries to protect him too much."

"Sounds familiar," said Javier, and she smiled in acknowledgement. "But the whole time I wanted to be with you, Esther. Or, I wanted to want that. I don't know."

He kissed her on the freckles, between her breasts, and she sighed. But he knew that wasn't really happening tonight. Except that Esther's hand had found his cock, and she didn't seem to care that they were both exhausted.

"Let's fuck," she said, shocking Javier slightly. She never swore. But it felt like the right word tonight. Fuck. He and Esther needed a good fuck.

She gave him his first orgasm with her hand, and he gave her one with his tongue. And then it seemed what Esther wanted more than anything was to feel his dick against her tiny entrance, something that seemed to Javier an exercise in frustration for both of them. But she wouldn't stop pressing, and eventually he slipped a finger inside her asshole, licking the sweat off the freckles between her breasts until she finally came again. She kept shuddering a long time after that one.

"Esther," he finally said, his voice soft. "We didn't have sex that way. Maybe Nicola wanted to, but I couldn't let myself."

"You should have," blurted Esther. "Oh, Javier, you should have. You deserve that with somebody."

He kissed her as she cried, and after a few minutes she gave him a long, deep kiss.

"I shouldn't have said that. You're always telling me you're perfectly happy with the sex we have. And I never listen, do I?"

Javier hugged her and told her it was all right. But he didn't know if it was. And he suspected they were having this old argument again because they'd gotten good at getting through it quickly to the part where they loved each other. Easier than talking about all the new things they were worried about. Esther hadn't said a word about Benjamin to him. He was still relying on the long, disconcerting account Selena had given him privately. Selena was right to be worried about Esther.

But it had been a pretty good fuck, all the same. And God knows he and Esther deserved that.

* * *

A few days later, they received an unexpected message on one of the secure accounts:

Prime is gone. Organization demolished. Can we talk, please?

-Geoff

Geoff was a hacker working for Lukas, though Nicola said he was more than that. Something closer to a computer systems manager. Javier and Kat had run into him along with Janelle back when they'd been trying to break into InfoCorp. Kat didn't think he was a top-notch hacker, but Nicola said he seemed very competent at his main job, and that Lukas had trusted him.

Esther was both relieved and unsettled by the message: finally, they'd have answers about Lukas, a week after they'd been desperately seeking his help with the rescue mission in Oregon.

When Geoff pulled up at the farmhouse that evening, Javier welcomed him at the door, making the introductions. "Raj, Selena, Esther. And you already know Kat and Nicola."

Mark had reluctantly agreed to wait in the back of the house. No reason to have Geoff meet more of them than necessary. Esther was pleasantly surprised that Selena had flown up for the day.

Geoff was a middle-aged man: brown hair, medium height, nothing particularly special in his appearance. But he did have sensitivity, and a few subtle Changes. Some hidden freckles. If he was intimidated by the group, he didn't show it. And when he began to speak, he directed his words to Esther.

"Thank you for meeting me. I'm glad to see that you retrieved Nicola and Javier safely, and I'm sorry we weren't able to help. I'm not sure Lukas ever received your message, or that he could have provided assistance if he had. Everything has been chaos since last week."

Esther didn't miss his use of Lukas's real name, a detail not apparently known to many in his organization.

"Where is Lukas?" Raj asked. "What happened?"

Geoff paused. "Before I begin, I'd like some assurances. I'll be honest: I'm scared, and I need protection. I have reason to think you can provide it. I have my own skills and a great store of knowledge from working with Lukas. I believe we could help each other, but I'm under no illusions about who has the power here. Your group has kept Lukas's secrets and held together more successfully than our organization managed. And as far as I can gather you've done all this while trying not to harm others. In short, I want to join you."

Esther glanced at Selena.

"Who is it you're afraid of?" Selena asked. "Lukas?"

Geoff shook his head. "No, not him. From others. The Chosen, perhaps. The British government and their allies. Not that any of them are targeting me in particular. I'm not a fugitive in that sense. I don't believe you would be adding any specific dangers by taking me in."

Selena nodded slightly, looking back at Ester: he was sincere. Everyone, including Geoff, expected her to make this decision. The British government? Geoff seemed to believe they already understood more than they did. They needed to know what he did.

"All right," said Esther. "We'll listen to what you have to say, and if you're honest, we will do what we can for you."

Geoff frowned at this tepid offer, but he didn't seem surprised. With a sigh he began.

"Lukas disappeared late last Wednesday night, I suppose two days before Javier and Nicola were taken. I believe he went on his own. With his skills and paranoia it's difficult to imagine someone abducting him quietly. He'd been behaving more and more paranoid of late, sharing less with even his trusted associates, and I suppose I counted among them. He can get away with that, you see, because of his astonishing mind. The entire organization ran on his cryptic instructions, with all the details stored neatly in his own head."

"So the organization crumbled without him?" Raj asked.

"Yes, but it's more complicated. A number of others disappeared at the same time as Lukas, and I assume he took them with him. All of them with Changes, including most of the more talented of our kind."

Javier nodded. "Janelle?"

Geoff shook his head nervously. "Janelle disappeared three months ago. She was not the first of our group to do so, but certainly the most unnerving. It obviously maddened Lukas that he couldn't find where her trail went. In retrospect I think she must've been taken or gone along with the Chosen. It was around then that we began to hear rumors of them, and Lukas became obsessed. For a time I think he even suspected your group of working with them, but for some reason he seemed to trust you more than even his own associates. I assume that has to do with Nicola, or his old friendship with Professor Patel."

Something he said had caused Nicola to wince, and Esther thought about that. Nicola had never said much about the time she'd spent with Lukas. But Geoff continued without seeming to notice.

"Lukas stopped talking about the Chosen, though. He seemed a lot more concerned with other events. The British crackdown, the instability in Hungary, the pogroms in Latvia."

Esther started. She had only the vaguest idea what Geoff was referring to. She'd subscribed to the New York Times since the school year began, making time to read it every day. Of course there was plenty of coverage of Britain and their paranoid, isolationist government, but no clear signs it had to do with the Changed. There had been mass arrests in Hungary, but the article said they were anti-government demonstrators. And only a single recent story about Latvia, which said nothing about pogroms.

Geoff was watching her.

"We don't know much about any of these international events," Esther said slowly. "All of them involved the Changed?"

Geoff nodded. "And much more, though I only understand pieces. Lukas had been so focused on Franklin that he admitted to me once he'd failed to cast a wide enough net. Franklin was a player in a much larger conflict. Until recently, world governments have remained uniformly unaware of the Changed, and the sad thing is I believe Franklin had something to do with that."

"What?" Nicola blurted. "What the fuck are you saying, Geoff?"

"Franklin wanted power," said Geoff. "But no one wants power for its own sake. Or I guess some do, but then they have to tell a story that justifies it. And I think Franklin's story was that he was protecting his kind. You see, the particular terrorists the Unit tracked were the Changed. Lukas always knew that, though I imagine he didn't tell you. Franklin was obsessed with squashing groups of the Changed who made themselves too obvious, so that they didn't bring the Changed to broader attention. I think that was why Lukas found it relatively easy to keep our existence quiet from the US government after Franklin's death. Franklin had already been working for the same thing. But without Franklin's awful control, and without being willing to use American might against radical Changed in other countries, Lukas couldn't keep us entirely secret across the world. I imagine Franklin would have failed as well, soon enough."

"That story you think Franklin told himself," said Selena. "That sounds disturbingly like the story Lukas is telling himself."

Geoff shook his head, but it wasn't hard to hear the discomfort in his voice. "Lukas is nothing like Franklin."

"Lukas was doing this work when he was enslaved at the Unit," said Raj slowly. "He would have been among the top organizers. He would have directly caused the deaths of Changed around the world, and he'd remember every detail."

Geoff nodded. "So I assume. He showed no emotions about any of it. But I always guessed it was that guilt that drove him."

"It was," Nicola said, and everyone looked at her. But she shook her head angrily and didn't volunteer anything else.

"Anyway, more and more that's what he was pursuing. Information from abroad. He sent people to other countries, and sometimes they didn't come back. Maybe it was the Changed taking them, or maybe something else. He stopped talking to me about it. So you see, we were already running short-staffed when Lukas disappeared with many of the remainder. And then the next morning, before I knew he'd gone, someone wiped our computers with a virus similar to the one we used on the Unit. I assume it was Lukas. Maybe I'm not as great a hacker as Kat, but I still know how to secure my systems against outsiders."

"So all that intelligence information is gone," Javier said.

"Mostly," said Geoff. "Lukas was very thorough. I didn't burden him with every detail of the computing setup, but he still wiped almost every off-site backup. I managed to find one unaffected drive, but it's all encrypted. So we're stuck with my own memory, which is pretty good, for the tidbits I was privy to. Unless you have state-level resources to crack encryption, and many years."

Esther blinked. They didn't have resources like that, but Esther and Raj had managed to partially crack an encryption method before the attack on Franklin. It was all thanks to her mathematical insights from otherspace. Javier kept pestering her to work more on that, pointing out how much information could be at their fingertips if she made further breakthroughs. But for a long while she hadn't had the time, or the ability. That might be different now.

"Hold on to that drive," said Kat, thinking along similar lines. "We'll see what we can do."

Geoff brightened, realizing she was talking about him as a colleague. And Esther realized that she trusted him. Well enough to work with him, anyway.

"Where do you think Lukas went?" Selena asked.

Geoff sighed. "Europe, I think. As a first stop, anyway. He's so careful to hide his tracks, but I found something on one of the others who went with him. As for why he went, or who he might be joining, I can only guess. Perhaps even the Chosen. There seems to be more than one group of them, with different agendas, but I'm afraid I don't know much more than that. I'm just guessing, because whatever he's doing, Lukas would still be trying to help the Changed. And that's become harder in this country, because of the British government."

"They were putting pressure on our government?" asked Raj.

"Yes, though they were subtle about it. But Lukas's influence was waning, his network crumbling. He probably made a jump to some new situation with better opportunities."

"So," said Selena. "You say he trusted you. Why weren't you taken along for the ride?"

Geoff winced. "Of course I've wondered that. And I think it's clear enough. Many of Lukas's employees were contractors, non-Changed, knowing nothing of his goals. Of the remainder, the ones in his inner circle, there were two basic types. Changed people, solitary, with few or no links to the rest of the world. And the rest of us, Changed people or their friends and family, each with others we cared about. It was the solitary sort he took. I have two sisters, some nephews, none of them with Changes or any idea of the world I worked in. They would miss me if I disappeared."

Selena nodded, satisfied.

Geoff was looking at Esther nervously. And so she made a decision.

"I think we'd like you to work with us," she said. "And you're right, we have some ability to protect you. That starts now. We may not tell you everything right away, but it sounds like you're used to that. Why don't you get together with Kat, if she's willing, and start making plans for a major computing investment. I can pay you salary, living expenses, whatever you think is reasonable."

Kat nodded happily. She'd been wanting to do something like this for a while, but she hadn't had the time to organize it herself, and she said it was a lot trickier than just sticking a bunch of computers in a room. Geoff had the time, and the experience.

"Thank you so much," Geoff said. "Yes, I would absolutely be willing to do that. Kat would also have full administrative privileges, of course. You won't regret this, I promise."

Geoff was a risk. But everyone had expected Esther to make the decision, trusting it would be the right one. Trusting the story Esther told herself: that she was trying to do the best thing for everybody. She wondered if that was how it always started.

* * *

Selena had to fly back, and Mark disappeared on another of his walks. Esther knew he needed to get back to the Sierras soon. The rest of them gathered in the living room to discuss Geoff's information.

"We're all worrying about Lukas and the Chosen, aren't we," said Javier.

Raj nodded. "Normally I'd think he was the last person to get sucked into a position out of his control. But he's always been so lonely. And Unity—"

"He wouldn't be able to resist," said Nicola flatly.

Esther tried to phrase it delicately. "Nicola, do you know something else about Lukas that didn't seem important at the time?"

"Christ," Nicola said, her face coloring. "I wasn't fucking him. I don't go around doing that with everyone. He just wanted company. We sparred for exercise sometimes, though he was ridiculously better than me, and afterwards we'd just sit, and occasionally he'd tell me how terrified he was that he was failing. I think he wanted a few moments where I could be something like a little sister. I was lonely, but he was absolutely alone."

Raj nodded, pretending not to have noticed her outburst. "He had a sister. His family still lives in Switzerland, and they all think he's dead. He wouldn't be intending to visit them."

They all tried to imagine what it would mean for Lukas to join his strength into Unity. Nothing good, likely.

"We just can't know what will happen," said Esther. "Too many unknown agendas. And we don't even know if it was the Chosen he was joining, or someone else."

"I liked Lukas, despite myself," said Nicola slowly. "But there was a cold, merciless part of him. He's driven to save every single Changed. He cares much less about the non-Changed, at least in abstract. No animosity, but they're just not his responsibility. And there were worse views among his crew. Geoff thinks it was his family that made Lukas leave him behind. I'm worried that it was more because Geoff doesn't think non-Changed are expendable. Some people thought of him as a softie."