The Prometheus Objective

28

“I can’t believe they won’t let me fly.”

Nina scowled at Orlando. “I can’t believe you’re still alive. I’ve seen you drive.”

“No,” Alexander chimed in, scooting closer to the edge of the seat so he could look back on the others. “That’s really cool! You actually landed a plane!”

Orlando rolled his eyes. “Did you miss the whole part where I was a Custodian for a day? I could bend time and space and annihilate planets with a thought…”

“Did you?” Aria asked, touching Alexander’s shoulder and peeking around him. “Do any of that stuff?”

Orlando looked down and shook his head sadly as Phoebe patted his shoulder. “Um, no they had me kind of busy, jerking me around to find our kids.”

Phoebe cleared her throat. “Who we had so carefully hidden.”

“Sorry.” Orlando put his hands to his head. “And sorry, this… coming back to my biological brain… it’s been like squeezing an ocean into shot glass.”

“Must hurt a bit,” Nina said with a snort, then leaned back in her seat and slid her eye mask on. “Wake me when we get to the bottom of the earth. I’m a bit tired. I actually did fly a plane.”

“I flew!” Orlando insisted with a pout.

“My pilot hero.” Phoebe leaned over, gave him a quick hug, then looked to the pilot’s door. “Although Nina, I’d feel a little more comfortable if…”

“The whole group and your bro back home scanned him and insist he’s clear.” She sighed and turned up her iPod shuffle. “Gonna get my rest for when I need to shoot more people later.”

Jacob fidgeted in the seat next to her. He had a bad burn on his forehead, and scrapes all over his arms that were either infected or turning into rashes.

“You guys have been through hell,” Phoebe noted, and said with an equal mixture of sympathy and admiration.

“Wait ‘til we tell you it all,” Alexander said, some excitement building. “We got so much wrong.”

“But some right,” Jacob amended.

“Goose chase,” Aria said with a sigh, rubbing her hands together.

Alexander took one of them. “But it brought us closer. All of us.” He nodded to Jacob.

“Surviving a gun fight can do that,” his half-brother said.

“So, what do we do now?” Phoebe asked.

Aria looked out the window, as if, from 35,000 feet, she could see the entire world. “And what the hell’s happening out there?”

“Well,” Orlando said, “we had some time to kill waiting for you…”

“Which was painful,” Phoebe mentioned. “Really painful. The kids…”

“We’ll get to them,” Orlando reassured her. “But from what we’ve gathered from the news—”

“And YouTube.”

He gave her a look. “Fine, you tell them.”

Phoebe forced a laugh. “Well, Armageddon is subsiding, at least a little bit. In part thanks to us.”

“Us?” Jacob asked, stretching in his chair. His voice sounded interested but his body language suggested imminent boredom.

“One of our own. A recruit named Victoria.”

“I found her,” Orlando bragged.

“You let her go.”

“Only cuz that dickface mind-flayer dude screwed with the test. I knew she was good.”

“In any case,” Phoebe said, “she’s done more to calm down this whole mass hysteria than anyone or anything else.”

“People are still struggling with it.”

“I can imagine,” Aria said. “Got to be overwhelming. Peeking in on anybody or anything. Finding out stuff that’s well, secret.”

“Secrets are good,” Jacob said. “We better fix this shit soon. I have enough secrets I don’t want out. And can you imagine if…” He made a motion with his thumb toward the dozing Nina.

“Right,” Alexander said. “More than a few enemies might want some revenge.”

“If they haven’t already learned all they need to know.”

“At least our location is hidden for now,” Alexander said. “Thanks to you, Aria.”

“You’re welcome, I guess. Although it’s a passive thing, and I guess I better stay awake.”

“No Nina naps for you.”

“Nope. So, what’s the plan?” Aria asked. “How do we turn it off or whatever? The global shield thing?”

“Xavier and Diana are working on it. They have some idea that we should be able to depolarize it or something and destabilize the shield.”

“Across the whole planet? And if it’s gone, everything goes back to normal?”

“As normal as possible, we hope.”

“Giveth, then taketh away,” Jacob murmured. “I like it. Very Machiavellian — kind and cruel at the same time.”

“Okay,” Aria said with a scowl. “Not sure that analogy works, but we’ll let it go.”

Jacob leaned back, feet crossed in the chair; he closed his eyes. “I’m just bummed we couldn’t bring that cool staff of yours. Have a feeling we’re gonna need some extra-ancient-bizarro weaponry where we’re going.”

“Me too,” Alexander said.

“Dumb question,” Orlando said with a shaky voice. “But has anyone tried looking over there? To the pole?”

Alexander, Phoebe and Jacob just stared back.

“Tried,” Alexander said, “and failed.”

“Blue?”

“Yeah, and also just… unclear. I saw a man in red entering a cave. Lots of wind and ice and a sense of something inside. Something so… I don’t know, just intense. So much that I wasn’t allowed to see it. Like when I was ten and wanted to watch The Exorcist and Dad said no way.”

“I saw the twins,” Phoebe said. “Caught in the twisted branches and vines of some enormous tree. It looked like something out of a nightmare. All shadowy and with spiked branches that…”

She bit her hand and shook her head. “…pierced their little bodies.”

Orlando held her as she trembled.

“It was as if they were being drained, feeding the thing. Only it wasn’t the tree, it was like… that crimson man was there, connected to it, under it maybe. The roots feeding his mind, and all these lights traveling from our kids through the sap and into his brain…”

“Yuck,” Aria said. “That isn’t going to come true. I swear, we’ll get to them first.”

“I know. But I keep hearing that Custodian’s voice in my head, from that place under the tunnels in Afghanistan. Your children are the key…”

She swallowed hard. “I’m freakin’ scared.” She checked Orlando’s expression, trying to find some hope. “I kind of wish…”

“I was still in the other phase?” Orlando said it quietly. “Get in there, get them and close this shit down?”

“Exactly.”

“Only, I don’t think it would’ve worked that way. Remember what the Tesla-Custodian said? He lost touch. They all did… with their former selves. With their family, friends or even the world at large. The onslaught of the infinite was really crazy. You lose sight of the little things.”

“Like our little problems of life or death.”

He touched his head and his eyes locked on something far away. “I felt it all slipping away, like my body — and everything ever associated with it — was just a blip in the timeline of eternity, and not worth a second thought.”

“Damn,” Phoebe said. “You really know how to make a girl feel important.”

“Yeah,” Aria seconded. “Maybe you should copyright some of that for Hallmark.”

“Sorry, just saying it like it is. Not my fault. But I had a small window of time when I was definitely still me. And could get to them. I bought them some time, but then the event happened, and they terminated the program and pulled me back.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe that was Miriam’s brainchild. And the plan of using a fake vision projector like Boris… genius. But it backfired, it appears. Sucks to be the victim of karma when she’s such a…”

Orlando stopped when he saw Phoebe’s questioning eyes.

“Anyway, maybe we should all try to sleep until we get to Antarctica.’

Phoebe was about to protest that she’d never be able to sleep — all while issuing the biggest yawn Orlando had ever seen her take, when she did just that.

Dozed off to the murmuring voices and the gentle humming of the engines.

And stayed asleep, mercifully without dreams for almost six hours, until someone screamed or shouted and woke her up.

Jacob sat bolt upright, along with Nina. She had been absently reaching over to touch his hand, and it had sparked something, triggering a vision.

“Dad!” he yelled, hands gripping the seat rests as if the plane had dropped from the sky. “In trouble!”

Nina flung off the eye mask and glared at everyone with annoyance. “Damn that impulsive idiot! He’s going in alone.”