In all the years Jon Brewer had known Trevor's son, he had never seen the boy so upset. To Jon, JB usually exhibited an almost unnatural control over his emotions. Now he appeared angry, frustrated, sad, and confused all at once.
'Jorgie, I don't know… I don't know what's wrong.'
'They made him remember bad things, mommy. They made him so…they made him sad. You're his wife. You have to do something! You're the only one who can!'
Jon felt awkward but he asked what he came to ask. 'Jorge, excuse me. You were down inside that thing. What was down there?'
The child wiped the back of his hand over his eyes, huffed, and answered, 'It smelled down there. It was scary. Lots of things that looked like people but weren't. They call themselves The Order.' 'I know who they are. You say there were lots of them down there?' Jorge nodded. Jon asked, 'We haven't seen any activity from up here. Where are they, Jorgie?'
JB regained his typical composure for a moment, stared Jon Brewer directly in the eye, and told him, 'I killed them. I killed them all.'
Jon shivered and glanced to Ashley. Her mouth hung open.
She questioned her son in a cautious tone, like a member of the bomb squad trying to diffuse a dangerous package: 'What do you mean, Jorge?'
'They had a bad machine,' the boy tried to explain but his voice suffered from coughs and a touch of hysteria as his composure slipped again. 'But it was empty. I filled it. I used it. It was the same machine they had father inside and you have to do something to help father! You're his wife!'
Jon asked, 'I don't know what you mean. What did they do to him? What machine?'
JB clenched his fists and raged, 'They kept showing him over and over all the things that made him feel bad. They put bad dreams in his mind, mommy. Make them stop! You always made my bad dreams go away!'
'Jorgie! Stop speaking to me like that!'
Jorge-frustrated and angry-jumped up from the bed, stormed from the room, and-after a struggle-opened the bulkhead door.
Jon said to Ashley, 'He's been through a lot. I can't figure out what he means when he says he killed them, but somehow he got away and got Trevor to the surface. From what he says, they were on their own for nearly two days. Pretty remarkable boy you have there.'
'I know,' Ashley wavered, moving her hands to Trevor’s forehead, then covering her red eyes, then fidgeting on her lap. 'I thought I lost him. It’s been Hell since they took him. To see him back, I still can’t believe it. I’m worried I’m going to wake up and find that this is a dream; that my boy is still gone.'
Jon said wryly, 'It may feel like a nightmare, but it’s real. Too real.'
'As for what happened down there, I don’t know what Jorgie did, but he did something. He found his father like this.'
Jon recalled Trevor’s first imprisonment at the hands of The Order: 'They tried to torture Trevor once before. What your son said, I mean it sounds like they got inside Trevor's mind. We know…I mean you and I both know… he's had it pretty hard. He's done a lot of things he feels bad about. Guilty about. And he's lost a lot of things in his life.'
Ashley whimpered, 'And a lot of…people he loved.'
Her reference to Nina came across clear to Jon. It made him stumble. He felt uncomfortable. Yet he pushed forward.
'Yes. I suppose so. From what your son said it sounds to me like they got inside his head and made him experience that stuff all over again. I dunno, maybe dreams or something. Maybe enough to, well, to drive him over the edge.'
Jon thought of how he had run from the field of battle when Armageddon first came. Or, more recently, how he had run from responsibility.
He said, 'A leader like Trevor needs to be able to put that aside; to forget about it or he wouldn't be able to get anything done. Maybe they pulled it out of his mind and made him re-live all those bad things over and over. I've got to believe that that'd be enough to drive him insane; make him shut down.'
Ashley stood and cast her eyes toward the door. After having lost her son for several days she did not feel comfortable letting him out of her sight for long. Nonetheless, she took a second to ask, 'But why? Why wouldn't they just kill him?'
Jon shook his head.
'I don't know. One thing we've learned about The Order is that, well, they're evil. No other way to put it. The monsters and things that come from Voggoth's world are the most vicious of the invaders. They kill in horrible ways, they take pleasure in torture. Maybe because they aren't really alive they're jealous of the rest of us. Or maybe they think beating down someone like Trevor Stone is an achievement. I'm guessing Trevor would know more about this than we would, if only we could talk to him.'
Ashley stood and moved toward the door in search of her son, stopping to tell him, 'You have to finish all this, Jon. Godfrey cannot stand. Whether Trevor comes back to us or not, you have to finish it.' He locked eyes on her and felt a harpoon of guilt pierce his heart. 'I know.' Ashley left the bedroom and, a moment later, exited the stateroom in pursuit of her son.
Jon watched her go until the door closed with a clang. He turned his attention to his friend asleep on the bed.
'Oh man, I really let you down.'
He felt a burning sensation in the corner of his eyes, pulled his hand away, and stared toward the ceiling, afraid to make eye contact even though his friend's eyes remained closed.
'When you left last time, we thought you might be dead. I tried to just keep doing the things you did, but they wouldn't let me. That time, well, there were protests and people started choosing sides. It got ugly. I was determined not to let that happen again. At least that's what I told myself.'
A deep breath. A long exhale.
'So I handed it over to Godfrey. He made sense, I thought. But I guess I was just looking to run away again. Truth is, I was afraid. Wow, yeah, big time. I just wanted to keep on being a soldier and let someone else make the decisions. I never would have guessed that Evan would be behind this. I suppose I just wasn't thinking clear. None of us were. I dunno. I guess what I'm trying to say…I'm trying to say I'm sorry, Trevor. I failed you.'
– When Farway had captained the Newport News on its expedition to the Arctic Circle, the bulk of his hair had been colored brown with a few streaks of dignified gray. In the five years since, the gray had consumed more of his scalp. Worse, that hair started to thin.
Thankfully, the evidence of gray and thinning hair remained somewhat concealed under his Captain's hat, which he insisted on wearing inside the tube-like cramped quarters of the Barracuda — class sub he temporarily commanded.
In front of his Captain's chair sat a helmsman and a navigator across from eye-like windows and surrounded by high tech consoles controlling the fast moving attack sub. To either side stood additional sailors at weapons, propulsion, sensor, and communications stations, all dressed in skin tight uniforms that doubled as diving suits if the need arose.
The air tasted heavy and humid, much different from the well-scrubbed atmosphere inside his boomer sub, the Newport News. Barracudas were streamlined and basic; lots of teeth and speed but little comfort. That's why they were not meant to travel far from port. Of course, Farway knew that intelligence used Barracudas to insert agents onto foreign shores and deliver supplies to resistance fighters in far off lands. The idea of spending weeks inside one of these floating cigar tubes gave the experienced boomer Captain shudder.
In any case, he had signed on to lead a group of three Barracudas manned by fresh meat from the naval academy, a bogus assignment that smelled of the civilian brass trying to find something for war dogs such as Farway to do now that the fighting had blissfully ended.
In truth, the Captain had spent little time training on these boats so he saw this as opportunity to learn more about The Empire’s newest naval toy. He quickly realized that he did not like it much, but he respected the amount of fire power stuffed inside the boat.
The training mission had begun simple enough until the Secretary of Defense personally ordered them to track the Excalibur and its renegade commander. Apparently Dante Jones did not realize that Farway shared a brief
