“You’re right,” Ostin said. “It’s subterfuge.”
“Exactly,” I said. Whatever that means. “Good night.”
“Night,” he echoed. I had almost fallen asleep when he said, “Michael.”
“Yeah?”
“You won’t tell anyone I said that, will you?”
“No.”
“Okay. Good night.”
“Good night,” I said, rolling over. Now my eyes were open. I was ticking. What if the devil was right?
When I woke the next morning Ostin was dressed and sitting cross-legged on his bed, reading. “Did you hear that rooster?” he asked. “It was crowing at like four in the morning.”
“No, I was too tired.”
“If I were you I would have thrown a lightning ball at it.”
“Should have,” I said.
Actually, I felt more rested than I had in days. It was the first time I’d gone through an entire night without having a nightmare since we’d sunk the Ampere. “What time is it?”
“It’s after seven. I was about to wake you up. Breakfast is in a half hour.”
“I’m going to shower,” I said. I grabbed some clothes, then walked into the bathroom. A hot shower is one of those luxuries you don’t think about until you’ve been deprived of it. I stood under the water until Ostin banged on the door.
“It’s time to go,” he shouted.
“I’ll meet you there,” I said. “Save me some food.”
* * *
By the time I arrived for breakfast the dining room was crowded. Taylor waved to me as I entered. She was sitting at a table next to both of our mothers. Ostin was sitting with his parents at the table behind them. The rest of our group, including Tanner and Grace, was sitting together.
Taylor got up to meet me. “Good morning, sunshine.”
“Looks like I’m the last one here,” I said.
“As usual,” she said, smiling. “The food’s over there. You just help yourself.”
The food was served buffet-style from long tables at one end of the room. There was thick bacon and sausage, scrambled eggs, hash browns with cheese and red and green peppers, and blueberry pancakes. I loaded up with everything, then, after saying hi to the rest of our group, sat down next to my mother.
“How did you sleep?” my mom asked.
“Good. I didn’t hear the four a.m. rooster alarm.”
“I did,” Taylor said. “It went on for like ten minutes before I rebooted it.”
“You rebooted a rooster?”
“I think so. It stopped mid-crow.”
“You should eat,” my mother said. “The food here is really good. They grow everything. Even the wild blueberries in the pancakes. They’re completely off the grid.”
“This is where I want to be for the zombie apocalypse,” Taylor said.
“Or the Elgen one,” I said. I looked at Taylor’s mother. “How are you, Mrs. Ridley?”
“Thank you for asking,” she said. “I woke this morning thinking I had dreamed it all.”
“Sometimes I still do too,” I said. I took a bite of blueberry pancake. It was delicious.
“Tell us about Peru,” Mrs. Ridley said. “And this tribe you were with.”
“You should let him eat,” Taylor said.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I wasn’t with the Amacarra that long. But they were good to me. They saved me from the Elgen.”
“I’d like to meet them someday,” my mother said.
“You can’t,” I said, frowning. “They don’t exist anymore. The Elgen and the Peruvian army wiped them out for helping us.”
Her expression fell. “I’m so sorry. That’s horrible.”
“It’s hard to believe that their entire civilization is gone,” I said.
“If Hatch has his way that will be true of all of us,” Taylor said.
Just the mention of Hatch’s name brought a cloud over the table.
As we finished eating, Joel walked in. He greeted a few people, then went to the front of the room. “Excuse me, I have an announcement. For members of the Electroclan, we’ll be meeting in this same room at nine thirty, so you’ll have a little time to go back to your rooms or walk around the grounds before then, but please don’t be late. Thank you.”
As soon as he finished he headed to our table. I again noticed the unspoken interaction between him and my mother.
“Good morning,” he said to all of us. Then he turned to me. “Michael, before things get started, the council would like to meet with you.”
“What’s the council?” I asked.
“They’re the leadership of the resistance,” my mother said.
“They’re waiting in the conference room right now,” Joel said.
“They’re waiting for me?”
“Yes. As soon as you’re ready.”
I glanced at Taylor. “What about everyone else?”
“This time they’d just like to see you,” Joel said.
I stood. “All right. Let’s go.”
My mother and I followed Joel back to the Ranch House, then across the main room, through a doorway, and down the central wing. At the end of the hallway Joel opened a door for me. “Go on in,” he said.
I stepped into a large, sparse room with a long, oval table with nearly a dozen people sitting around it. They all stood as I entered. I recognized most of them from the night before, but with the exception of Joel and Sydney Lynn, I hadn’t known who they were.
The man at the head of the table walked toward me. He was a little older than the others, handsome with graying temples. He extended his hand. “Michael, welcome. I’m Simon.”
“You’re not the voice,” I said.
He shook his head. “No. I’m not. I’m the council chairman.”
“You’re the main guy?”
He smiled. “I am here. The council runs most of the day-to-day operations of the resistance, but the overall leadership is elsewhere. The threat and power of the Elgen is such that it’s vital that we not keep all our eggs in the same basket. The council communicates with the voice, who directs operations from a confidential location.”
“I’d just like to meet this person who keeps asking us to risk our lives,” I said. “I think it’s only fair.”
“And so you shall,” Simon said. “When the time is right. Please, have a seat at the table.”
I sat down alongside Joel and my mom. Everyone else sat down as well.
“Welcome to the Timepiece Ranch,” Simon said. “We have many questions for you, and I’m certain you have many for us as well. So please, if there’s anything you would like to ask first, go right ahead.”
I looked around the room, then said, “Where did you all come from?”
Simon smiled at my forthrightness. “That’s a good question,” he said. “The great physicist Newton said, ‘To each action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ Simply put, we are the reaction to the rise of the Elgen.”
“But who started this?”
Simon hesitated, then leaned toward me. “Your father was the founder.”
I glanced at my mother, who nodded. “My father?”
“He was the first to realize what the Elgen had done. Back in those days, the Elgen’s goals were different than what they are today. They were all financial. Our group started when your father realized that everyone who was involved with the Elgen’s initial MEI tests was in danger and he began gathering us to protect one another. I was one of the original members of that group as well. Almost everyone at this table was somehow involved with those tests. The Elgen brought us together by giving us something in common—they threatened our lives.”
My head spun a little. “I can’t believe this is all because of my father.”
“I understand,” Simon said. “What other questions do you have?”
“Why is everything such a secret?”
“Anonymity has always been our greatest weapon. Up until a few weeks ago, the Elgen didn’t even know that w
e existed. Now they do. If they knew where we are right now, they would hunt us down and, if possible, destroy us.
“We keep things secret for your safety as well as ours. As you well know, the Elgen are not above torturing for information. That’s why we don’t know the whereabouts of the voice. But we communicate what we know to the voice and he guides us. This way, if something were to happen to us, the resistance would continue. It must continue. Failure is not an option. Does that answer your question?”
“Yes, sir.”
“If we fail, the world will fall into a state of captivity it has never before experienced—not in its thousands of years of recorded history. It would be Orwellian.”
“So what is it that you do?”
“Whatever we need to do to hinder the Elgen,” he replied. “We began purely as a means of self-defense. We tracked the Elgen’s movements. As they grew, we began to infiltrate their organization. Of course I can’t tell you where or who our informants are, but when the Ampere exploded, one of our people was killed.”
I began ticking. “We . . . we killed one of the good guys?”
Simon shook his head. “It couldn’t be helped.”
“But if we knew they were there . . .”
“You didn’t,” Simon said. “As it was, you barely escaped with your lives. There was no way we could have alerted you. He died in the explosion, but whether the Ampere was destroyed or not, he would have died. Hatch had discovered who he was. He would have tortured and killed him. In that way, you did him a favor. He died instantly.”
I was still ticking. Simon leaned forward. “Son, this is not your concern. Our agent knew the risk he was taking and he was willing to accept it. Just as you and your friends have risked your lives. Just as Wade gave his life. This is war. Lives have been lost. And unfortunately, more will be lost before it is all over.”
Simon looked around the table at the other council members, then said, “Michael, we asked you here this morning so we could explain where we are in our struggle. Throughout history there have been men who have launched movements that have changed the world. Men like Genghis Khan or Adolf Hitler. At one point in their climb to power all of these men could have been stopped. But once their plans gained momentum, no one could stop them until their revolution had run its course. It is a cycle too familiar in history. By the time the world starts taking these revolutions seriously, it’s already too late. They are like pythons in the jungle. The smallest child can crush a python egg. But let the snake hatch and grow and the python will squeeze and devour the child.
“Dr. C. James Hatch and his Elgen are on such a trajectory. In the last six months Dr. Hatch has taken complete control of the Elgen organization. He has built an elite guard of highly trained soldiers more than two thousand strong. We believe this number will double in the next six months, then double again the next year. He has an army. And they’re better equipped than most police forces and militaries.
“Make no mistake, when the Elgen are ready, they will attempt to take over the world. The fact that they were prepared and willing to take over the country of Tuvalu demonstrates this.
“Last week in Lima, you and your Electroclan almost put an end to Hatch’s climb. Almost. If it weren’t for you he would have attacked and conquered the island nation of Tuvalu this week. I regret to inform you that he has not abandoned his original plans. You have slowed the Elgen but not stopped them. They will not be stopped so easily.
“In spite of your successes, we are losing this battle. The world views the Elgen as a blessing, because they promise them free, clean energy. They don’t know—they don’t want to know—the cost they will be forced to pay.
“I tell you this to prepare you. As you saw in Peru, you were not celebrated for liberating their country—you were demonized. That is often the way of heroes. And why, more times than not, we build monuments to those our fathers stoned. Someday you may be celebrated, but it might not be in your lifetime. Heroes are heroes precisely because they are willing to do what everyone else won’t—oppose the popular voice. But we will know what you have done. And in your heart, so will you. And that is more than heroic. It is noble.”
I let his words sink in. “We’ll do our best,” I said.
Simon smiled. “And that is noble too.”
When I returned to the dining room the rest of the Electroclan was seated around two tables at one end of the room. A man I had never seen before was standing in front of them. He was dark-skinned, tall, and powerfully built. His hair was trimmed close to his scalp, revealing a thick scar that ran from the nape of his neck nearly to the top of his head. He had a narrow waist and biceps as large as my thighs. He reminded me of an action figure.
As I sat down he said with a slight Hispanic accent, “Welcome, Michael. We were waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “The council wanted to see me.”
“I was told.” He turned back toward the group. “Let’s begin. My name is Gervaso. You don’t need to know my last name, because we don’t use them here. First, let me say that it’s an honor to meet the brave young men and women of the Electroclan. I’ve been closely following your activities and what you have done is courageous and heroic. That’s precisely what it’s going to take to stop the Elgen.”
He put his hands behind his back. “Today, I am here to brief you on our enemy. To understand why the Elgen do what they do, it helps to understand their history. The Elgen Corporation was founded in 1984 as a medical products company specializing in electroanalgesia—the technology of relieving pain through nerve stimulation. Much like what our Abigail here does.”
We all looked at Abigail. She smiled and bowed.
“Their technology sounds modern, but in reality it is ancient science. More than two thousand years ago the Greek philosopher Socrates noticed that standing in a pool with some types of fish could produce numbing sensations. The Elgen’s first patent was for an electric nerve implant to stop back pain.
“As they experimented with electricity, a brilliant scientist named Dr. Steven R. Coonradt discovered the original science that the MEI technology is based on. Recognizing its potential, the Elgen Corporation brought on some significant investors to pursue the technology, which took nearly three years longer to develop than they had planned. The investors—former chairman Schema was one of them—became impatient, and the CEO of Elgen, Dr. Hatch, was pressured for results. Against Dr. Coonradt’s advice, the MEI was tested before it was ready. You know the results of that test as you are the results of that test. Seventeen surviving babies were born electric. The rest of the children born during that period died at birth or within days.
“It took only a few days for the Elgen to realize the connection between their experiments and the infant deaths and shut down the MEI. But there were others outside the Elgen Corporation who also made the connection. Not so coincidentally, these people mysteriously disappeared. Most of them died of electricity-related deaths.” He looked at me. “Carl Vey, Michael’s father, was one of those people.
“At this time, there was another important death. Dr. Coonradt, the only man who understood the science on which the MEI machine was built, also ‘disappeared.’ It was a grave mistake on the Elgen’s part but a blessing for the world. Had Dr. Coonradt lived he likely would have solved the problem with the MEI, and the Elgen would already be producing their new species.
“Faced with the possibility of lawsuits, the Elgen Corporation shut down the MEI project. The company was taken over by the investors and Schema became the new CEO. Dr. Hatch, who should have been thrown out, was demoted to executive director. We don’t know why he wasn’t fired, but knowing how Dr. Hatch works, I would wager that he threatened to go public with the Elgen deaths, which would have no doubt resulted in massive lawsuits and destroyed the company.
“At any rate, Hatch remained involved with the Elgen. He was ordered to find and follow the remaining seventeen children just in case they began dying later as well.
/>
“It was about five years after the MEI experiment that the first electric child was discovered. That was Nichelle. She was in foster care and had been sent from home to home. Her record showed that wherever she went the home suffered damage to its electrical system. A few of them burned down.
“Because she had no permanent home and a history of running away, she was easily taken in by the Elgen. They began running tests on her and discovered her power. That’s when they began, without the board’s consent, kidnapping the other electric children. As you know, the last to be found were Michael and Taylor.
“It was likely during this time that Dr. Hatch came up with the idea that the MEI could be used to create a super-race of humans. This is nothing new. Throughout history, others have tried to create a super-race. Unfortunately for Hatch, with Dr. Coonradt gone, their ongoing experiments with the MEI were largely unsuccessful, with one big exception—they accidentally discovered how to electrify rats.
“The timing of this ‘accident’ was fortunate for Hatch. The board had just become aware of Dr. Hatch’s crimes and had resolved to terminate him. Instead, Hatch won them over with a small machine he had created called the Elecage—a prototype to the Starxource plants. Hatch demonstrated to the board how this dishwasher-size box was able to produce enough energy to power the entire Elgen building without pollution or fossil fuels and at a fraction of the cost of conventional energy sources.
“Chairman Schema and the board immediately recognized the potential of what Hatch had developed and the very real possibility of controlling the world’s electricity. They would make trillions of dollars.
“Of course Hatch also realized the potential of his discovery, but he never lost sight of his original plan—to create a master race. Hatch still believes that he will someday be the father of a race that will dominate the world and rule the Nonels.”
“What’s a Nonel?” Jack asked.
“You’re a Nonel,” Gervaso said. “So am I. Nonel is the term Hatch uses to refer to nonelectric humans. It is ironic that Hatch himself is a Nonel.