Deathwatch (The Faded Earth Book 1)(25)

Eshton nodded. “I figured. Would you mind if I caught a nap on the way? This thing goes fast, but we have at least two hours, and I could use it.”

She said nothing, instead pulling out her tablet and focusing her attention on its screen.

Eshton closed his eyes, but sleep wouldn’t come. Something about being pulled from the edge of it had restarted the process. Some people used repetitive thoughts to lull them toward unconsciousness, but that had never been his way. Instead he played through old memories. Painful ones. The mind is a complex and mysterious structure, each uniquely crafted. Eshton’s was prone to retreating into sleep to escape the rawness of those thoughts.

It felt appropriate to remember his lost sister and brother, his dead parents. For everything the Deathwatch had taken from him, he was still a true believer. Life had to be preserved at all costs, whether it was the many or a single person. He might be willing to sacrifice the individual if truly necessary or unavoidable, but that didn’t mean he would stop trying to bend circumstances to prevent it. That was why the Movement was so small and secretive, composed of fewer than a hundred Watchmen out of thousands. Too many forgot that a willingness to kill one to save many did not always equal a need to do so.

As he lay drifting, his mind slowly becoming unmoored from the harsh reality around him, Eshton stopped lying to himself. At first he took an interest in Beck because he saw himself in her. That had never been in question. Then he began to witness her better qualities. Despite the conditioning meant to train his mind not to form those connections, he had begun to care for her. He wasn’t so na?ve that he called it love; they barely knew each other.

But he saw the person rather than the set of circumstances, and he liked that person. Valued her. For her determination in the face of events easily capable of shattering her as it had countless others before. For her casual brilliance. For her incredible resilience.

The lie Eshton finally let go of was that his decision was a selfless one. The Movement had a purpose so important that according to every ethic and moral he lived by, the only choice was to serve its needs above all other considerations. Beck was an asset of potentially enormous value. By giving her information that would force her hand, he added a small but real weight to their chances for success.

Had he explained this to her with all the relevant facts rather than only the quick and dirty information, it was possible Beck might have come to see his point of view. It’s a rare person who isn’t moved by a thorough explanation of how they can potentially help save the entire world.





12


Beck spent the Loop ride working out some complicated math. Fisher described mathematics for any purpose but work as ‘unnatural and weird’ but accepted that everyone had their quirks. In this case, the effort had a point; Beck was trying to figure out exactly where they were going.

It wasn’t as successful as she’d hoped. Hyperloops—the old world name for the technology now called Loops—could travel at incredible speeds, but she had no way to gauge how fast this carriage went. Nor did it maintain a constant velocity or direction. It slowed a handful of times as it switched tracks and careened through wide arcing turns. The tunnels spotted through the windows grew increasingly older, obvious through their construction materials and state of repair, before finally switching from drone-bored passages to the uniquely handcrafted infrastructure of the old world.

“Wake your ass up,” Beck said as the carriage slowed to a halt. The rush ended up not being a concern; they remained locked inside for a quarter hour. More than sufficient time for Eshton to seal himself back in his armor and ready their guest—prisoner?—for transport.

The carriage sat in a deep recess, its worn stone walls at least ten feet high. It was impossible to tell how far underground they were. Eventually a set of feet appeared, slowly walking down the steps carved into one wall of the pit to reveal a wizened man older than anyone Beck had ever met. Out in the far reaches of the Protectorate, nearly everyone eventually succumbed to the Red Lung caused by the omnipresent dust once their respiratory systems grew weak with age.

The ancient man seemed stiff but not weak. A fringe of white hair circled his head, blending into a short beard framing a dark brown face made of craggy planes and angles. Beck’s breath caught in her chest. She knew this man. He was much older than his public profile image, which had been captured at the beginning of his term, but it was him.

“That’s Francisco Bowers,” Beck breathed, not taking her eyes away as the old man approached the carriage. “High Commander of the entire fucking Deathwatch.”

The only member of the order required to show his face and be openly known to belong within it.

Bowers keyed open the carriage and swept his gaze across the scene. He paused on Beck, an unknowable look on his face. For all that it lacked expression of any kind, she felt the weight of his intelligence and judgment in that brief glance.

“Come,” he said, waving a hand at the suit containing the unconscious man. “Bring him along. I have people ready for him.”

They followed him up the stairs—the spare suit managed this surprisingly well considering there was no active human pilot guiding the steps—and Beck could not stop taking in the details. There were few pieces of video or even photos left over from the old world, at least not for public consumption, but she knew what sort of place they were in. The Protectorate might have decided to prevent the mistakes of the civilization that had come before by censoring the majority of its history, but places like this were the rare sort that occupied both.