Ground Zero Part 6

"Got an idea," he said. He rose and retrieved a pen and a napkin from the bar. "Okay. What's this thing called again?"

Diana repeated the name and Jack spelled it phonetically: fint-MAHNCH-ka. fint-MAHNCH-ka. One weird word. Didn't seem to fit any language he'd ever heard. One weird word. Didn't seem to fit any language he'd ever heard.

Suddenly Diana shot from her seat.

"He's here!"

Jack saw Davis instinctively reach for his empty shoulder holster. They both looked around, wondering what she meant.

"I feel him!" she cried.

The whole place was staring at her now. Someone at the bar said, "Hey, you can feel me too! Anytime you want."

Jack shot a look toward the bar, searching for the comedian. Couldn't tell so he turned toward the front window and saw Veilleur's face peering in. An instant later he was gone.

"He's outside!"

She rushed toward the front door. Davis tried to grab her arm but missed, so he rose and followed on her heels. Jack held back. He wanted to see Veilleur too, but had to let him go.

Diana stepped outside and peered up and down the street. Finally she gave up and came back in.

"I know it was him," she said with a despondent look as she dropped into her chair.

Jack knew the answer but felt obliged to ask. "Who?"

"The Sentinel. He was right outside. I felt felt him." him."

"Are you sure? sure?" Davis said.

"Of course I'm sure," she snapped. "Sometimes you just know things, and I know he was out there." She looked at Jack. "Why didn't he come in? If I can sense him, I'm sure he can sense me. Why would he avoid me when I could tell him about the Alarm?"

For all Jack knew, Veilleur could have been stopping by to see him after all this time. He certainly understood why he wouldn't want an Oculus and a yeniceri to see him in his present condition.

"Maybe he already knows," Jack said, realizing it sounded lame.

She shook her head. "I don't understand. It feels like everything is slipping away. The Adversary seems to be getting the upper hand, and the Sentinel does nothing."

Because he can't, Jack thought. Because he's not the Sentinel anymore. There is is no Sentinel. Just an old man and his supposed Heir. no Sentinel. Just an old man and his supposed Heir.

But he couldn't say that. No one could know, or even suspect-especially the Adversary ... the One ... Rasalom.

"I'm sure he has a plan."

"Well, if he does, he'd better act soon, because there's not much time."

She pulled off her gla.s.ses and he had a glimpse of her startling, all-black eyes before she covered them with her hands and sobbed.

Jack wanted to reach over and hug her against his side and tell her it was going to be all right. But she knew too much to believe that anyone could promise that. And how convincing could he be when he didn't believe it himself?

He saw Davis's stricken look and knew he felt the same way.

"Did you see anything else?"

"No," she said without looking up. "But I had a dream after the Alarm, and it was what I didn't didn't see then that scares me." see then that scares me."

Jack knew immediately what she was talking about.

"You mean the future?"

She nodded. "I saw the Nantucket house in the summer as it is now. And then in autumn with the leaves falling. Then covered with snow. Then the trees budding. Then ..." She lowered her hands and leveled her black gaze at him. "Then nothing ... nothing but blackness."

Jack held her gaze. "I know."

"You know? know? How?" How?"

"You're not the first to see that. Over the past year I've heard exactly the same thing from a couple of other sources."

The late Charlie Kenton for one. And during her coma, Gia had experienced something similar to Diana's dream.

"Then that means the Adversary is going to win," Diana said. "And if that's true, then all this is for nothing."

"Not necessarily."

She squeezed her eyes shut as tears rolled down her cheeks. "I'm never going to be fifteen."

Jack grabbed her hand. "I have it on good authority that what you're seeing is how it will be if we do nothing. But we aren't going to do nothing. We're going to stop him and the Otherness."

He didn't know why, but he needed to give her hope.

"How?"

"The Sentinel-once he's alerted to the danger, he'll act. He'll come charging in and make the Adversary wish he'd never been born. He's kicked Otherness b.u.t.t before and he'll do it again. That's why the Adversary is being so sneaky. He knows if the Sentinel gets wind of his schemes, he's cooked."

Jack marveled at how easily he mixed lies and truth. And Diana seemed to be buying it.

"But why doesn't he do something now? now? I have an awful feeling about this I have an awful feeling about this Fhinntmanchca Fhinntmanchca, whatever it is."

"I'll look into it," Jack said.

If he couldn't find it in the Compendium Compendium, maybe Veilleur would know-if Jack could find him. d.a.m.n, he wished he knew where he lived.

The three of them lapsed into silence and Jack glanced at the PBR clock over the bar. Noon was approaching.

Diana took a slow, shuddering breath and pointed to the black orbs of her eyes. "I don't want this."

"Diana," Davis said softly. "You were born to it."

"Then I wish my parents had never met. I don't want to know what's coming. I don't want to look like this. And I don't don't want another Alarm." want another Alarm."

Jack had witnessed her father in the throes of one and it hadn't looked pleasant.

"Painful?"

"You wouldn't believe." She replaced her sungla.s.ses. Her voice edged toward another sob. "I didn't ask for this."

"That makes two of us."

She leaned toward Jack. "You're the Heir. You're supposed to be itching to take on the Adversary."

Jack held back a laugh. "You're kidding, right? I've met him, and believe me, that's the last thing I want to do."

"But you're supposed to be n.o.ble, a hero."

Teenagers ...

"I don't know who's doing all this supposing, but it doesn't change who I am. I'm just a guy from Jersey who's learned a few tricks. This is the only way I know how to be."

"But how ... how will you defend us if your heart's not in it?"

"Defend you?" Jack looked at her, then Davis, then back to her. "I don't know you well enough to put my life on the line for either of you."

"She was talking about the rest of humanity," Davis said.

"Hey, I know the rest of humanity even less. But I do know a couple of people in this town I will die for if I have to. So if you wind up benefiting from my defense of them, then lucky you. But you won't have to thank me, because I'll have done it for them."

Diana shook her head. "I don't believe you. You're better than that. You're the Heir. Heir." She said the last word as if repeating it would somehow morph him into her preconceived image.

"So I'm told. Be nice if someone had checked with me first."

"If you're the backup," Davis said with a sour expression, "then let's wish the current Sentinel continued long life and good health."

Jack raised his coffee cup. "I'll drink to that."

4.

"What is that? that?"Hank said.

Drexler had led them to a closet in a small room off the main bas.e.m.e.nt s.p.a.ce, and pulled up a trapdoor in the floor. He'd explained that all the Order's lodges were built with subcellars and escape routes. "Just in case."

Down a wrought-iron spiral staircase to a dark, dank s.p.a.ce that echoed like a cave. Then Drexler hit a switch somewhere and the place lit up.

Yeah, kind of cavernous, with a domed ceiling strung with hanging lights. Then Hank saw it. How could he miss it?

A big, oblong thing, like a huge, blunt-ended football that needed some air, lay on its side at the far end of the s.p.a.ce. He guesstimated its size at maybe ten feet long and four feet high. Light from the overhead incandescent bulbs reflected dully from its surface.

"Yeah," said Darryl at his side. "What is it, man? Looks like a giant booger."

Hank had to smile. Darryl had pretty much nailed it-like a transparent football filled with snot.

"How quintessentially you," Drexler said.

Darryl shrugged. "How'd you get it in here without any of us noticing?"

"You never noticed because we moved it in long before a single Kicker set foot in the building."

Hank didn't see any door big enough to fit it through. "What you do-bring it in in pieces?"

"No, that would have been quite impossible. The task required a bit of demolition and subsequent reconstruction, but we succeeded."

Hank had noticed signs of repair on the rear wall of the Lodge, and now could see signs of the same in the roof of the chamber.

"You must have wanted it in here really bad."

"Oh, we did, Mister Thompson. We did."

"Back to my original question: What is the d.a.m.n thing?"

"We call it the 'Orsa.' "

"Orca?" Darryl said. "You mean like a whale? Don't look like no whale I ever seen."

"No," Drexler said with a definite edge to his voice. "Orsa. It's Latin. It means 'first.' "

Hank stared at it. "What's it supposed to do?"

"Change the world, Mister Thompson. And I believe you know the change I'm talking about."

Hank nodded slowly. He did. His daddy had talked about that change. He'd called it the Plan and it involved beings, the Others, locked out from the world, waiting for ages to return, and a way to help them back in.

But the Plan was all about a bloodline, Hank's bloodline, leading to a very special baby, a baby now living in a teenager's belly, a pure-blooded child who would unlock the gates that prevented the Others from returning to the Earth and reclaiming it.

When they returned they'd reward those who'd unlocked the gates. Or so he'd been told.

"Yeah, I know. But the way to make it happen didn't involve anything like this."

"There is more than one route to that end, Mister Thompson, and all are being pursued. Opus Omega is stalled, at least in this country, due to some unfortunate scandals involving the Dormentalists."

Darryl snickered. " 'Unfortunate,' all right."

Drexler looked like he'd just sucked a rotten egg. "Must he be here?"

"Cool it, Darryl."