The Prometheus Objective

12

Xavier tried again and again to pull himself from the cycle of visual agony.

Death, on a massive scale. Not just his, but so many countless souls. Millions. Billions. A culling of the weak — or a ridding of the strong, he couldn’t tell. Just wiping the slate, making room from others.

This wasn’t annihilation. Just eradication and elimination.

A man in red.

Samurai.

Crimson garb, except for a touch of something sparkling and green around his neck. A power no one should have.

A command of the world’s armaments.

“Firing them at each other,” he mumbled in his half-crazed, fevered dream. Dimly aware of someone’s soft hands on him, trying to soothe him even though she herself was in the throes of her own psychic onslaught.

“X, it’s me. Diana…” Softer, a warm breath on his lips. “Let me help you.”

He blinked and blinked and shook his head, and still the visions clung like stubborn ants to the bottom of a shovel.

Suddenly Caleb’s voice cut through the din of explosions and screams in his head. “Diana! Agents, get him to the Star Chamber. I have a feeling something about that room will calm both of you, clear your heads. And Xavier?”

He tried so hard to focus. Heard his name, the urgency in his voice.

“We need you, now. As fast you can, focus on the Cuzco region of Peru, a man sometimes associated with a red samurai suit.”

“Huh…?”

“Break his control. Get into his head!”

Before Xavier could even ask one of a dozen muddled questions that order brought up, he was whisked to his feet, along with Diana, and ushered to the door.

Stumbling through the halls, smelling the fragrance of pine and mahogany, of old books and candles older still, he had flashes of ceremonies beyond these walls: of hooded men chanting; others lying amidst flickering torches and runic letters.

Before he could process these flashes, he felt a rush of cool air, found himself in a darkened room and saw what at first appeared to be a night sky.

“Stars on the ceiling,” Diana said, marvel in her voice, which sounded calmer already, and then he could see it: large panels set in the arched ceiling, appearing like windows to the night sky, even though it was daytime outside. A Maxfield Parish blue with calming stars. Two circular chandeliers, dazzling and beautiful, hung from the beams.

Concentrate.

Hands on his face, gentle fingers massaging his temples. Soft hair falling over the stars.

“Concentrate,” she said, “and let me help…”

Something passed between them, even before her lips found his. A sharing of thoughts and memories. A vibrational transfer of psychic energy maybe, but it was profound, and Xavier felt for a moment a release of the dread and absolute terror that had covered him like a shroud since the Long Island experience.

“I can see it,” she whispered.

“What?”

“Everything.”

He struggled, felt uncomfortable like being at a doctor’s office with an inexperienced nurse trainee jabbing at a vein to extract blood. It was working, but not so elegantly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. Again. “I should be the one to do this.”

“You can’t, and now I know why. See why you’ve struggled.”

Her eyes found his, and before her lips grazed his again, he had a moment flashing back to Nina, to her warmth; to nights she seduced him, or she let him think he won her over. She was the same, but more skilled at this extraction of visions, and he knew Diana could sense it.

She knew.

Knew everything. He felt it in her kiss — breaking away momentarily, a twinge of jealousy, and she had to be seeing and feeling so much right now. Overload. If she hadn’t already accessed his memories or seen his past. Their past.

“I’m sorry,” he tried to say again, but in the midst of this sharing, this ultimate melding of minds, it sounded completely hollow and unnecessary. What happened had happened. There was nothing to feel guilty about, although…

She knew his darker secrets as well, and he felt them extracted from his psychic reservoir and filling her mind.

The worse things that had made him cringe.

The theft of the Emerald Tablet from under Caleb’s nose; outwitting his traps and stealing it — only to have unforeseen consequences. The fire, Lydia burning to death and poor Alexander having to watch helplessly.

Xavier’s heart felt caught in a vise.

There were things to atone for. Other things he tried desperately to keep from her.

But maybe, just maybe, Diana with her lips pressed against his and her gentle fingers pressing against his chest, could understand. Like no other, she shared his mind, knowing his motivations, if not his methods, were pure.

Maybe, just maybe, sharing his past and his anguish would allow her to overcome her own psychic onslaught and give her the perspective she needed to see past it all, to gain control as he had done through years of practice. And maybe…

They had to hurry.

…she would push it all aside, concentrate on the objective and give them a chance.

“I see it,” she whispered.

“What?”

“The President. But not him, there’s a man…”

Xavier got a glimpse of it too. Sharing her mind sharing his vision.

A man in red. Horned helmet and a shadow over his face.

Her soothing voice, now tinged with excitement. Like a stargate recruit in the zone, understanding she was seeing her first successful objective. “The lake, the mountain range, from high above. I know it.”

She gripped his arm tighter, and her breath spilled out cool and almost frosty, as if she were there, at a great height soaring over the land.

“The Andes. Peru. Cuzco and Lake Titicaca. I see…”

“Smokestacks,” Xavier repeated, breathing in the same crisp air, tinged now with the scent of pollution. “A factory, and a walled compound. Trucks and cannisters and convoys ready to depart. Where is he?”

“Inside.” She pressed her cold cheek against his and whispered in his ear. “See it?”

He did.

Intense security on the lowest level, once past the manufacturing floor, the vats and the powders and the pill production lines. So many locals working in cramped conditions packaging and counting and sealing bottles. Retina scan and handprint access to the elevator. A long descent. Another floor. Guards with AK-47s before the door to a circular room with a vault door that cannot stop their sight.

Something in the center of the dimly lit chamber. Tubes and wires feeding an upright tank, backlit by somber lights the color of amethyst. The nude man inside, floating calmly.

Something around his neck, glittering a fierce jade.

“Found him,” both Diana and Xavier said in unison, as the image of a red samurai suit mounted on a mannequin remained in their vision, not far behind the tank.

“Tell Caleb,” Xavier whispered in her other ear, just before he moved his lips around to hers. “I’ve got this, but he has to be ready for consequences.”

“What are you going to do?” came the question back, but Xavier was already gone.

His body slumped back in her arms as his spirit fled, racing across time and space, ascending and descending, feeling the whirling atoms (or bits and bytes) of the universe hurtling by as consciousness drove matter — and overcame its restrictions.

A yard or two thousand miles made no difference.

Locked doors, hundreds of feet of bedrock, armed guards and vault doors made no difference.

He was there.

Gliding across the chamber, drawn to the emerald glow.

Focus.

The man in the tank was an empty shell, his own consciousness projected elsewhere, taking over the most powerful man in the world, ready to launch hell upon the globe.

And this was how Xavier would stop him.