Independence Day Read online

  “There are worse things that could have happened,” Scout said. “Pandora keeps pounding away at the fact I don’t know who my mother is. In a way I’m relieved, but it’s also a bit upsetting to know most of your life has been a lie. I’ve been too busy trying to stay alive to really focus on it.”

  Moms put a supporting hand on Scout’s shoulder.

  “You’ve done well,” Sin Fen said.

  Scout pointed up. “I think that red flicker up there is the result of failing my mission.”

  “You didn’t fail,” Sin Fen said. “We were betrayed by one of our own. By the Oracle at Delphi. Pythagoras was dead when you arrived. There’s nothing you could have done differently. And you did survive. That’s rather impressive considering what you were up against.”

  Moms spoke up. “What is Scout? I mean for real. Not this priestess, oracle, Defender of Atlantis, mumbo-jumbo.”

  Sin Fen didn’t take offense. “As with traveling in time, we don’t know everything. But there are some things we do know. The Defenders of Atlantis, the women, were able to stop the attack of the Shadow on our world, our timeline, over 10,000 years ago. But in doing so, Atlantis itself was destroyed. The survivors scattered around the world.”

  Sin Fen tapped her own chest. “We’re Defenders. We’ve succeeded for 10,000 years, but now it’s becoming apparent the Shadow is more focused and more determined to take down this timeline.”

  “’This timeline’,” Moms repeated. “Are you like Dane? And Earhart in the Space Between? This isn’t your timeline?”

  “No, this is my timeline,” Sin Fen said. “I know more now than I did last time I saw you. I’ve been getting tested.”

  “How?” Moms asked.

  “Nothing mystical,” Sin Fen said. “MRI’s. CAT scans. Psychological evaluations. We have to get better at understanding the science, because it all boils down to physics. The time travel. The timelines. The brain, though, is so complex, that it might be the last thing we figure out. But we have to start somewhere.”

  Sin Fen pointed at the side of her head. “Our minds are different, Scout.” She nodded at Moms. “Yours too, to an extent. Physiologically different. Structurally different. The two hemispheres of the brain are a form of redundancy. Left brain, right brain.”

  “You mean I got a big brain or something?” Scout asked, trying to lighten the mood.

  “A different brain,” Sin Fen said. “In humans, speech is controlled by Broca’s Area in the left frontal lobe of the brain. The question is: what about Broca’s Area on the right lobe? As best scientists have determined to this point, it does have some role in speech in terms of prosody, the ability to add inflection to speech.”

  “Roland would tell you to skip to the headline,” Scout said.

  Sin Fen put her hands on the railing overlooking the Pit. Moms went to one side of her, Scout to the other. “We use Broca’s Area on the right side, Scout. A lot more than normal humans.”

  “The Sight,” Scout said.

  “Yes. I could go into the science, as far as it was explained to me, but the explanation didn’t go very far and there was too much speculation,” Sin Fen said. “The scientists who tested me aren’t sure what to make of the data. And there was much I couldn’t tell them.”

  Moms spoke up. “Like Atlantis, the Shadow, traveling in time.”

  “Correct,” Sin Fen said. “The First Rule—”

  “Yes,” Moms said. “We know the First Rule.”

  “So we have different brains,” Scout said. “Back to my question. Pandora has a different brain too. But where is she from? Another timeline?”

  “I think so,” Sin Fen said. “I believe it’s a timeline that developed differently. Where women are in control. Where their Defenders became dominant.”

  “Pandora seemed a bit bitter about Gaia being supplanted in our ancient Greece,” Scout said.

  “Gaia is the Earth Mother,” Sin Fen said. “The personification of the Earth itself. Almost every culture initially worshipped a form of Gaia. Even in primordial Greek mythology, the Gods and Goddesses, and Titans, all came from Gaia. But it goes back before the Greeks. Since women give birth, it’s natural that early mankind thought everything came from a mother.”

  “But not any more,” Moms said.

  “Not any more,” Sin Fen agreed. “Every modern religion has overthrown the concept of Gaia and made God masculine.”

  “Okay,” Scout said. “But not in Pandora’s timeline. And that’s why she says we’re sisters. That we should work together.”

  “I would assume so,” Sin Fen said.

  “Why does she care about our timeline?” Scout asked. “Why is she obsessed with making sure Alexander the Great’s ancestors aren’t wiped out?”

  “I read your reports,” Sin Fen said. “I’ve been thinking on it. There’s a legend, a myth, which my mother told me and hers before her and down the line. The Defenders are just that. We defend. The first ones defended the planet against the Shadow and saved the world but lost their home in Atlantis. Defenders are always women. My mother says there is a prophecy that one day there will be a man, a warrior, who will have the Sight. He can do more than just defend. With him, we’ll actually be able to defeat the Shadow.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Moms said. “Not the warrior part, but that Pandora thinks Alexander is that man. He’s been dead over two thousand years. He had his time.”

  Scout agreed. “He built one of the world’s greatest empires, but it was gone not long after he died.”

  “He died when he was thirty-two,” Sin Fen said. “Consider this. What if he’d lived?”

  Scout understood. “She wants to take him to her timeline.”

  “That’s my assumption also,” Sin Fen said.

  “So, she’s blocking,” Moms said, “the Shadow’s attempts to wipe him out before he’s even born in our timeline. The Shadow is trying two for one. Cause a Ripple, most likely a Cascade in our timeline, and deny Pandora.”

  “Hold on,” Scout said. She gripped the railing tight and closed her eyes. “Let me think for a second. Pandora said she’d already accomplished her mission when I ran into her at Thermopylae. Let’s assume she was telling the truth. She said she hung around because she was curious to see what I was going to do. And that guy, Xerxes Dagger, seemed more interested in her and what she’d done about some baby who was an ancestor of Alexander than he was in me. So let’s say neither of them were there about me. They were battling each other. And then the next guy, the next assassin, said he killed Pythagoras to get me to go after Pandora. And she said he was there to kill two of Alexander’s ancestors.” Scout opened her eyes. “It’s starting to make sense.” She looked at Sin Fen. “Who are these assassins? These ‘we are Legion’ dudes?”

  “I’ve been looking into that,” Sin Fen said.

  “My head hurts,” Scout said. “The orb, the map, that I got during the Thermopylae mission. What was it?”

  “Something that didn’t belong in our timeline,” Sin Fen said. “If it had stayed in our timeline it would have been very dangerous. So you got it, and we passed it on in the Space Between to another timeline.”

  “How did you know to do that?” Moms asked.

  Sin Fen hesitated.

  “Then what was my mission to the Pythian Games?” Scout asked, allowing Sin Fen her silence for the moment.

  “That was it,” Sin Fen said. “Getting that map out of our timeline. You did a good a job.”

  “But what about my D-Day mission? If it was to save Pythagoras, then Legion was killing two birds with one death. Taking out Pythagoras and going after Pandora by setting me up.”

  “Possibly,” Sin Fen said.

  “And Pandora isn’t traveling into the bubbles,” Scout said. “She asked me why I thought she ever left. She acted like she was there in Greece the entire time, from Thermopylae until two years later at the Pythian games. That she never left.”

  Both Moms and Sin Fen waited, letting Sco
ut think it out, since it was her experience that had shaped this.

  “What if,” Scout said, “Pythagoras wasn’t my mission? What if my mission was the same as Pandora’s? Stop Legion from killing Alexander the Great’s ancestors?”

  “Then Pythagoras was collateral damage,” Moms said.

  “That makes more sense,” Sin Fen said. “While Edith is upset about the sculpture being gone, killing Pythagoras the sculptor, is nothing compared to killing the forebears of Alexander the Great and insuring he’s never born.”

  “If that logic holds, I actually succeeded in my mission,” Scout said. “Pandora, Cyra and I, killed Legion. Saving the timeline.”

  “Yes,” Sin Fen said. “That makes more sense. It feels right.”

  “Exactly,” Scout said, her mood lightening considerably. “Pandora said you should teach me. That there was much I need to learn.”

  Sin Fen gave a bitter smile. “I wish I could teach you more. Then I’d know it, too. Much has been lost over the millennia since Atlantis.”

  “Do you know the four levels of awareness?” Scout asked.

  “Yes,” Sin Fen said.

  “And where are you?”

  “I can reach three,” Sin Fen said. “At times. I can’t sustain it.”

  “That’s better than me,” Scout said. “Pandora said I was only at two.”

  Sin Fen’s voice was only in Scout’s brain. ‘Can you understand me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Scout replied, mind-to-mind.

  ‘Moms?’ Sin Fen projected.

  Moms was startled. “What was that?”

  “Did you hear me?” Sin Fen asked. “In your mind?”

  “I just sensed something,” Moms said. “A feeling. Hard to explain. But no, I didn’t hear words if that’s what you mean.” She looked from Scout to Sin Fen. “You two can talk telepathically?”

  “We can do level two of awareness,” Sin Fen said. “Awareness of others. You can sense level two, but not use it.”

  “That could be useful in certain circumstances,” Moms said.

  Scout got down to her most important question. “So, who is my mother?”

  “We don’t know,” Sin Fen said. “Dane has checked into it. But so far—” she shook her head. “Nothing.”

  “What?” Scout said. “Did I just appear? What does my nominal mother say?”

  “She thinks you’re her daughter,” Sin Fen said. “Her biological daughter.”

  “That doesn’t make sense,” Scout said. “You think she’d know if she squirted me out or not.”

  “She believes she did,” Sin Fen said. “Remember, though, that memories can be played with.”

  “Yeah,” Scout said bitterly, her good mood gone that quickly. “Like Frasier played with Nada’s mind, erasing his memory of his family.”

  “It was for his own sake,” Sin Fen said.

  “I doubt the altruism given it was Frasier,” Scout said. “This is just a clusterfrak.” Scout shook her head, trying to clear it. “What about this ‘forever death’ that Pandora threatened? What’s that?”

  Sin Fen shook her own head in reply.

  Scout turned to Moms, exasperated.

  “Are Pyrrha and Diana from Pandora’s timeline?” Moms asked. “It seems likely. But they’re not infiltrating our timeline regarding Alexander. I met Pyrrha after Alexander’s time when I was at Marc Antony’s villa. And Roland met Diana well after Alexander’s time also. What are they trying to do?”

  “Once more,” Sin Fen said. “We don’t know.”

  “What about these Fates?” Moms asked. “Who are they?”

  “We don’t exactly know that either,” Sin Fen said. “Perhaps, like Pandora, they’re from another timeline.”

  “Pandora said they were powerful,” Scout said. She gave up being specific. “What do you know?”

  “There’s something, someone,” Sin Fen said, “called the Ones Before. We know they battle the Shadow. And they help other timelines. We know they exist. They helped Atlantis stop the Shadow from destroying our would. And we get messages from them, every so often. Not very clear messages. But to answer your earlier question, they were the ones who instructed us to pass on the map that you got at Thermopylae. We don’t know why. Who it came from. Who it went to. We just did what was requested.” She shrugged. “Perhaps the Fates are the Ones Before?” She phrased it as a question.

  “You think we know?” Moms replied.

  “Members of your team have met the Fates,” Sin Fen said. “That’s more than I have.”

  “What about the Space Between?” Scout asked. “Can we find out more there? From Amelia Earhart?”

  “If she knew, I’d know.” Sin Fen smiled. “Why don’t both of you go back to New York? Take some time off. I understand there’s someone you’re both looking after.”

  “Not looking after,” Scout hurriedly said. “We’re just concerned.”

  “But it’s a good idea,” Moms said. “Come on,” she said to Scout. “Let’s head back.”

  They walked away, heading to the HUB to return them to their own present. Sin Fen watched them for a moment then looked up at the red splotch in the cloud of the future, with a troubled expression on her face.

  Assembling For The Missions

  Airspace, Atlantic Ocean

  “WISH WE COULD HAVE STAYED a few more days,” Neeley said. “Never thought I was a beach person, but I never spent time at a beach before; the coasts are a long way from Kansas.”

  They were the only two people in the back of the Cellar jet. It was top-of-the-line, no transponder, no number painted on the tail, and the pilot had a book full of call signs to use that accessed every airport in the world.

  “It was okay,” Roland granted. He was checking his arm, rolling up the sleeve on his t-shirt. “I got a tan.”

  Neeley laughed, something she was doing more and more around Roland. “That’s a farmer’s tan. Told you take your shirt off. I wish you would have let me tan topless.”

  Roland was shocked. “Be naked in front of strangers?”

  “Just topless.”

  Roland responded without thinking, which wasn’t unusual for Roland. “You’re my girl. I don’t want other men looking at you like that.”

  From another man it might have sounded jealous, possessive, petty. From Roland it was more pit bull protecting someone he loved. The fact that Neeley, as efficient a killer as Roland, took it that way, said something about the comfort level between the two.

  “Since when am I your girl?” Neeley asked.

  Roland frowned, the barbed wire tattoo on his forehead twisting. “I don’t know. Just are.” He became worried. “You are, aren’t you?”

  Neeley laughed again. She reached out and put her hand on his forearm, her long fingers wrapping around the cords of muscle in it. “Absolutely. Absolutely.”

  And then Roland’s satphone chimed: Lawyers, Guns and Money.

  New York City, The Present

  SCOUT WAS READING OUT loud from the brochure to Moms: “To study the history of art at Columbia University is to join an enterprise where more people are engaged in making, writing about, exhibiting, and collecting art than any place else in the world’.” She folded the brochure. “Geez, they think a lot of themselves.”

  “Edith says it is the best program in the world,” Moms said. They were in the back of a lecture hall on the upper west side campus of the University. Isabella, with her long dark hair, was easy to spot among the hundreds of students in the lecture hall in front of them.

  A professor was showing slides, prattling on about something that Edith would have found fascinating. Moms and Scout were more interested in Isabella.

  “Thanks for setting this up,” Scout said. “Getting her in mid-semester must have been hard.”

  Moms smiled. “I called Hannah at the Cellar. She can get pretty much anything done. Getting Isabella in Columbia was probably squeezed in between authorizing Sanctions and stopping a coup in some foreign country. Plus, you
need to thank Edith. She has a surprising amount of pull here. She’s sort of a legend around here. She was their top graduate ever and no one is quite sure what’s she doing now.”

  “It was nice of you anyway,” Scout said.

  Isabella was the daughter of Nada, the deceased team sergeant of the Nightstalkers, the only team member who’d taken Dane’s choice to go back to fix something in the past during the transition to the Time Patrol.

  “You got any idea what that guy is saying?” Scout finally asked as he went on about Baroque something or another.

  “Nope,” Moms said. “That’s why we have Edith.”

  Scout nodded.

  Moms turned to her. “Do you want to go to college, Scout?”

  “Huh?” Scout was taken aback. “Why would I want to do that?”

  “It’s a normal thing,” Moms said. “You never had the chance. When we met you in North Carolina you were just finishing up high school. In fact,” Moms blushed, realizing she’s never thought of this before, “did you ever get your diploma?”

  “Nah,” Scout said, dismissing it too easily.

  “I’ll get it for you,” Moms promised.

  “How? Have Hannah send Neeley to threaten the principal?”

  “You earned it,” Moms said, with the finality of her position, team leader of the Time Patrol.

  “Thanks,” Scout said. “My mom would like that. You know, the one who thinks she’s my mom. My dad too, I guess. If he’s my dad. No one ever talks about my dad. But if my mom isn’t my mother, then . . . Weird.”

  “What about college?” Moms asked. “You could go—”

  “I’m Time Patrol,” Scout said.

  They both watched a little longer in silence.

  “You’ll make a good team leader, one day,” Moms said to Scout.

  Scout was surprised. “What? Why do you say that?”

  Moms pointed at Isabella. “You care about her. She’s Nada’s family and it’s the team leader’s job to take care of the family of the team members. You’re doing it instinctively. That means your heart is in the right place.”

  “’Keep me in your heart’,” Scout whispered. There was a glint in her eyes as she remembered the Warren Zevon ring tone that had been her private link to Nada.