Eye in the Sky Bk 02: Artifact Ch. 05

"Yes," he said, "go ahead."

She closed her eyes for a few moments. "Oh my," she said when she opened them. "We do seem to have a situation here. Do you mind if I tell the others?"

"No, that's why I called you," Oliver told her.

There was no sound for several minutes but Sawyers friends seemed to be listening intently. Mike was paying no attention.

"Nice boat you have here," he told Oliver.

"What's going on?" Oliver said. "And thanks."

"She's telling them all about it," Mike said. "I don't like for her to do that with me, so she doesn't. She'll tell me in English what she thinks I need to know. She only does the mind trick thing to me in an emergency. I'm afraid she'll fry my old brain."

They laughed. "I know exactly what you mean," Oliver said. "I tried godhood for a day or two and it got pretty ugly."

"I wouldn't want it either," Mike laughed. "Sawyer isn't always God. She has to choose to be God. She can turn it on or off. It's nearly always off. I've never known her to just use it indiscriminately."

"She's just like you, Dad," Ben said. "Here's an example of Kane's incorruptible person."

"Oh, she's pretty corrupt," Mike laughed again, "just not like that. She's naughty and smart and quick tongued and you better not make a slip of the tongue around her or she'll never let you forget it. She's perfect and I love her more than life."

"Sounds a lot like another young lady I know," Kane said."

"If you're talking about me, I'm right here, you know," Bannon said. "I guess if you're talking about me being perfect and you loving me, it's okay, but I'm only a little naughty."

Kane laughed. "See what I mean?"

"I'm curious," Mike said. "What made you think about calling Sawyer? You didn't know her abilities; what made you think she could help?"

"I don't know," Oliver mused. "I just knew she had somehow overcome some huge odds and I knew Lawson's father had been killed and that she knew a lot of very powerful people. I had the feeling there was more to the story than ever came out in the papers. That statue over there in the box confers a similar power to hers, and I've been exposed to it a lot. Maybe I'm becoming more sensitive. Hey Mike, here's your chance at godhood? Think you'd be as good at it as Sawyer?"

"I doubt it. I'd be an angry deity. When people do stupid or cruel things to other people my finger would be right there on the smite button."

"I've never looked for power over other people," Oliver said. "I've never understood people with that kind of God complex. I'm an author, Mike, and I have that kind of power over my characters. They sort of come to life in my mind and I like to mess with them. I'm a capricious God. I can't imagine having that kind of power over real people. I can't imagine wanting it."

"Neither can I," Mike said. "Some people are just tools like that."

"Mike, our problem is that people, very bad people know we have this thing," Kane said. "We don't know how to destroy it and they would probably never believe that we did if we knew how. We'd wind up in some third world prison being buggered up the ass, shot full of drugs and eventually killed. That's how these people operate. We'd be 'threats to national security' or some such bull shit and we'd just disappear."

"We've been in the very same situation," Mike told her. "The NSA had us on their hit list for a couple of years before they were disbanded. Marcus was almost murdered in his cell before he was able to escape. Tell them, Mark."

The young man with the flaming hair had not spoken. He had been listening to Sawyer, but it seemed like she was finished. When he did speak it was the deepest voice Oliver had ever heard. He spoke softly and slowly.

"I was locked in a cell when I was five years old. I was there until I was 16. I never left that room. It was at a NSA facility. It had rubber walls, floor and ceiling to prevent me using my ability. I can't read minds like my sister, but I do get premonitions about things that are going to happen.

One day when I was 16, I was sitting in my cell reading a book. They kept me supplied with books or I'd have gone crazy. Maybe I was a little crazy. Sawyer helped me when I found her and took away all that. Anyway, I was sitting in my cell and I realized that an NSA agent was coming to kill me. They had me locked in with a key because I had escaped several times by shorting out key pads. When I knew the key was in the lock I got ready, and when I heard the lock click I shot a bolt of electricity through the lock and into the key. It was strong enough to kill an elephant and it killed that agent. I opened the door and he was lying there on the floor with a gun in his hand."

He had a nametag on that said Marcus on it. I didn't have a name, so I took his. I took his clothes, his key card and his wallet and gun. I walked out into the desert. I walked down a road until I came to a gate. There were guards there and they came out and pointed their guns at me. They made me lie down on the road and called someone on the radio. He told them to kill me and I made a bolt of lightning like you saw earlier strike them. I took all their things and their jeep and got away. I could barely talk, I didn't know how so many things worked and it was a struggle to stay alive. I knocked people out and stole their things. I only remembered one person in the world who had been kind to me. That was Sawyer. I hadn't seen her since we were five, and I didn't even know she was alive until I was in a store one day and heard her name mentioned on a TV. It took me three years to find her.

When I did I was like a wild animal. I was tortured and given drugs until I was five, and then locked in a cell for 10 years by myself. I know I was a mess. Sawyer and Lawson took me in and I've been with them ever since. We don't even know if we're really related. All our records were destroyed, but we could easily be related and she has always been my sister in my mind. She helped me cope with everything, and Lawson is like my big brother. I've only started getting to know Mike, but he's been very kind to me. That's my story."

Bannon walked over to him and hugged him. He was very stiff and uncomfortable. "Relax, Marcus. I like you and I'm sorry all those things happened to you. This is my way of telling you. Now, put your arms around me and hug me back. That's what you do when people hug you."

He laughed and did as he was instructed. "I know," he said. "That's what Sawyer and Lawson tell me all the time. I've kind of gotten used to them doing it, but it still makes me very uncomfortable. I like it, but I think it may take years to get used to it. No one touched me for 15 years except to beat me or inject me with something, and it takes some getting used to."

"That's so sad," Kane told him. "It's exactly the same kind of thing I don't want to happen to me or any of the rest of us. What are we going to do?"

"This is kind of a tough one," Sawyer said. "First there's the problem of making sure you're all safe, and then there's the problem of the artifact. Do you think we could see it, Oliver?"

"Sure, what are you going to do with it?"

"I don't know. I can't imagine what it is. I can't imagine that it has the properties it has. Maybe I can sense something."

Oliver unlocked the box and brought it to her. She took it and turned it over in her hands.

"It's beautiful to look at." She closed her eyes and her brows drew together. She whimpered a little and Lawson folded her in his arms. She was obviously exerting a tremendous effort of some kind and she trembled.

When she opened her eyes she appeared shocked. She clung to Lawson and seemed overcome for a moment. When she spoke her voice was trembling.

"Do you believe in God?" she asked the group. "This is very important that you answer truthfully."

In the end, only Bannon and Molly did not. "It's not so much that I don't believe in God as it is that I have no idea," Bannon told them. "I would like to believe in God, and I can't explain anything without God, but I just don't know."

"I feel exactly the same way," Molly said.

"Well, I used to feel that way myself. I was searching for something that I couldn't find, but the day our father died, I found it. He was dying and I wouldn't let him go. I'm very powerful when I am as desperate as I was that day. I pulled Lawson in and we followed Rawlins and held on to him. He took us somewhere and there was something else there. It loved us and it was infinitely good and wise and kind. It wouldn't let us stay, but I know that thing. It's more like a mind than anything else I can describe. I can show you if you let me. But take my word for it right now. God exists, and he's good. Mark, see if you can tell anything about this."

She handed him the statue. He shuddered as soon as his hands touched it. He handed it to Oliver as if it were burning him. "Put it away," he said. "Don't touch it again. It's evil, Sawyer. It's radiating something, and whatever it's doing is going to look good, but there's a price. It's full of dead men's bones."

"I wondered if you would feel it," she said. "There's something out there connected to this statue. It's like a wire to another universe. On the other end of that wire is a hate and a lust and a darkness that's the opposite of what we felt in that place that Rawlins took us. I tried to break that wire. It was too strong for me but I got the attention of that thing. It sent a huge pulse along that wire to squish me like a bug, but it never got here. Something swallowed it up and turned it back on its sender magnified a million times. It was nearly destroyed. I don't think it will do that again but I can't sever the connection. You should never use it again, Oliver. It will turn everything black you do with it."

"I was afraid of something like that," he said. "We had it figured as either God or the Devil. I was the only one that favored the devil. They had persuasive arguments. It seems to have good effects in a lot of ways. It heals wounds, we think it's been growing Ben and Bannon up, it causes fertility in plants and animals. I think we have the largest population of iguanas in the world. The thing I couldn't get my head around was the whole mind control thing. It has the potential for control for the good, but who says that the people using it will be good? They've obviously been evil before. Everything we know about it says that it eventually destroys everyone who possesses it."

"Sawyer, it's already got a string on Oliver," Marcus told her. "I can feel it like you said."

"I know. I'm going to try to break it. Do you want it broken, Oliver?"

"Jesus Christ, how can you doubt it? You're not just messing with me, are you?"

"I'm afraid not. I'm very sorry. It seems like there's this energy flowing into you. There's something going back the other way, too. I don't know what it is but it's tapping you at some deep level."

"That's so creepy," Kane said. "Oliver we've got to get it out."

"I feel like I have a parasite inside my head. Please, help me Sawyer."

"You might not like the way it feels because I'm going inside your head."

"I don't care, get it out." He was feeling some degree of panic.

"Calm down, Oliver," Kane sat down beside him and put her arms around him. "You've obviously only been slightly affected or you wouldn't have taken off that arm band. We'd all be your sex slaves by now."

He laughed. "I guess you're right. Thanks, Kane; but you're not the one whose soul is being sucked out. Just hold me; that makes me feel better."

Sawyer sat on the other side of him on the edge of the sofa and took his hands. "Close your eyes and try to relax," she told him.

He rested his head on Kane's shoulder and closed his eyes. He felt a warm presence and she spoke inside his head.

Oliver, I'm going to nearly become you and you're going to nearly become me. Don't be worried. I won't snoop and when it's over you'll be just the same. Is that okay?" Oliver heard her voice in his mind.

"Yes, I think so. It's very difficult to do this. I'm not having any trouble understanding you, but it's very difficult to form thoughts into words."

"It usually is for adults. Children adjust very quickly. Don't try to talk to me unless you need to."

He felt her envelope him and he became something different, an amalgam of Oliver/Sawyer. Her personality threatened to overwhelm him and his senses began to slip away. He felt Kane support him as his body began to sag and suddenly she was gone.

"Oh my God, Oh my God, that was a rocket to the moon, Sawyer. Did it work?"

"Yes, it wasn't as easy as it should have been. I can't touch the power of that thing. I don't know how to attack it. I did something you might not like, Oliver."

"I don't care as long as it's gone and I'm not a drooling fool. What did you do?"

"I had to erase the place in your mind that it was touching. I didn't do anything physically, so you're fine, but there's a blank spot there. There may be things, tiny things you don't remember. You should be fine and I'm sorry, but there was no other way. It was trying to attach to the rest of you and I kind of threw out the baby with the bathwater."

Oliver's relief was palpable. "What did you say my name is again?"

The room exploded with laughter. "You big clown," Bannon said. "I swear you'd tell jokes in the elevator to hell."

"Well, that makes me feel a lot better, but we still haven't solved the problem of how to stay out of that South American prison or get rid of this evil thing."

"Well, I'll work on the first one," Sawyer told him, "and maybe Mark can work on the second."

"What can you do?" Molly asked Marcus.

"Give me enough juice and I can reduce it to atoms."

"How will you do it?"

"How big a current can you generate?" he asked Oliver.

"We've got huge generators. But if you can make lightning strike, why do you need generators?"

"There's only so much static energy out there. One bolt and you're pretty much done. It's flashy and it's really hot, but it won't last. I'll take all of it that's available and use it up a little at a time with whatever you give me. I ought to be able to boil it away if we can find something stable enough to hold it."

"What about a fire brick out of a boiler unit?"

"That might work for a crucible. Are you ready to go through with it?"

"No, I'm not. I want to do it, but I want to know about the other part. What if I need a bargaining chip?"

"Dad, the thing is evil. We've got to get rid of it. What if someone evil gets hold of it? What's to stop them from becoming a mad dictator? What if the mad dictators we've already got get it? What if DARPA gets it? You kid around and call them Nazi's in suits, but that is a true description of every government anywhere in the world and they'd love to see the rest of us goose-stepping right along. You know that. You taught me that."

"Yes, that's all true but if it came to a choice between trading the statue for your safety, I guess I'd choose you."

"Don't let me get in the way of you doing the right thing," Ben told him. "You made me memorize a quote when I was 10, 'Those who would give up Liberty, to purchase Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.' Do you remember that? Ben Franklin said that."

"Yes I know, Ben. You know how I feel about that."

"I don't," Lawson said. "I understand Franklin's quote, but he was a committed statist who believed that liberty and freedom exist in some sort of tension that has to be balanced. It's bullshit, as Sawyer would say. Why do people always assume that we need to make a sacrifice? Why is it always us that has to make a sacrifice? How many sacrifices does government make? When we allow them to protect us we make a deal with the devil we're always going to lose in the long run."

"It's true," Kane said. "It's a protection racket written large. We'll protect you from these bullies if you'll pay us and allow us to run your lives. If you don't, we'll be the bullies you need protection from."

"Think about it for a minute," Molly said. "Whether it was Roman emperors or the chiefs of tribes, British Kings or revolutionaries, dictators or American presidents; every one of them have all claimed their first job is to keep us safe, and that since they keep us safe they are somehow entitled to take away our liberties. From speech they hate and fear, to our privacy they love to invade or our wealth they covet, we always make the sacrifices and give up more and more of our freedoms."

"I've thought about this a lot," Sawyer said. "I had plenty of time while they kept me locked up in a small box, naked and freezing in the name of "national security." We cannot be separated from our freedom, if we're human beings. James Madison said that 'in the history of the world, when freedom has been won, it happened because those in power begrudgingly permitted freedom as a condition of staying in power or even staying alive.' No government in history ever willingly gave freedom to anyone. The only excuse for the existence of government is to protect our freedom. We're not slaves. Government is the antithesis of freedom. If anyone really believes that by giving up his freedom and his right to speak and act as he chooses, the government keeps him safe and that is the best way to ensure his safety, let him give up his freedom. I'm keeping mine."

"You're a bunch of anarchists," Mike said, "But I agree. You just can't give blood-suckers and parasites like that a stranglehold on people. It's got to be destroyed."

"Can't you take it and keep it safe, Sawyer?" Bannon asked.

"Yes, but I won't. It doesn't belong to me and I won't have it around. I'm telling you it's evil. It's drowning in blood. How many people have died to feed it? Think about the history of Israel. Think about the history of the crusades and the Templar's. It has a long bloody history, and I won't touch it. How tempted do you think I am to reach out and fix things in the world? I'm not wise enough and it isn't my responsibility. People have the right to destroy themselves if they want to. I won't accept the responsibility."

Oliver had been soaking up the debate with interest and a rising conviction.

"Out of the mouths of babes," he said to Bertrand. "Kids, listen to me. I am in awe of you. This is the smartest room of people I've ever been in and you're all under 25. The rest of us are idiots, fumbling in the dark. You're right; I can't allow this to fall into the hands of anyone. We'll destroy it, but that still doesn't help us out of this jam. Can you imagine what a President or a Prime Minister would think if we told them we destroyed it? They'd never conceive of destroying it themselves, they're not built that way. They'd never believe us. They'll think we're concealing it and torture us all into mindless husks to find out where. What are we going to do about that?"

"For now, we're going to run and hide," Lawson said. "We're going home and you're putting out to sea. We'll work from our end. Sawyer will think of a plan and start working on it. It may be as simple as making everyone who knows anything about it forget what they know. The problem is that we don't know who knows what. Sawyer can talk to her friends. The former President and his family are with us a lot, and I'll bet she can get the ear of the current President. If she's a decent sort of person, she can put a stop to this. If she's a creep, Sawyer can make her do it. We'll keep watch and try to keep you safe. It's going to take a while. In the meantime we need to find that brick."

"I think in the morning will be soon enough," Oliver said. "Let's turn in and get some rest, I'm drained."

In the morning they got up and their mechanic opened up the boiler beneath Baxter House and removed several fire bricks. They took the statue and the bricks down to the engine room of The Nimbus, Marcus concentrated for a moment and an arc sprang up, piercing the statue. It became blinding in its intensity and the group pulled hoods down and watched. The Nimbus' engines throbbed as the load on the generators grew and the air began to crackle. The girls' hair began to stand out and vapor began to rise from the statue. It slumped and seething puddles danced on the bricks as the metal reached a critical heat and plasma began to stream away. Marcus held the arc for what seemed an interminable time, and the body of the statue was gone. The head glowed with an incandescent light and the crackling increased in volume.