Shuttered Sky

“Are you going to tell us why you left?” she asked. “What could you possibly have been thinking, going out there alone?”

“I wasn’t alone. And if I left, then I had reason to.”

“You have no idea how dangerous it is for you out there, do you? You have no idea how many people want to use you—the way Bus­sard did.”

“Don’t pretend I’m here for my own protection.”

Maddy wanted to argue with him—to tell him that, yes, he was here because he was incapable of taking care of himself—incapable of giving direction and purpose to his own powers.

“I’ll talk with him now,” Tessic said, making his presence behind him known.

Before leaving them, Maddy asked Dillon if there was anything she could do for him. To which Dillon answered. “You could scratch my nose.”

And so she did.

* * *

The cockpit was the only place she could go to get away from Dillon, and as much as she wanted to be with him, she wanted to be miles away. It was the strange nature of Dillon’s charm that it repelled almost as much as it attracted. Or maybe it was that she had no way to deflect his anger. Let Tessic talk him down and enlighten him as to why they were halfway across the Atlantic ocean. It was, after all, his inspiration, not hers.

She closed the door, and although it shut out their voices, it didn’t close out the strength of the field that surrounded each of the Shards. She was used to it by now—eventually she could tune it out like the background drone of the jet engine, but never, never when Dillon was close enough to touch.

“Come sit,” the pilot offered in an Israeli accent even stronger than his cologne. His name was Ari, and he had also piloted the helicopter that spirited her and Dillon from the graveyard a few weeks ago. From what Maddy knew, he was once the most decorated pilot in the Israeli air force. Now he served as Tessic’s own private aerial chauffeur. Only the best for Tessic.

“Come, the co-pilot takes a shit. Sit down, I teach you to fly.”

Maddy ignored the invitation. She looked through the windshield to see darkness. Flying east, the sun had plunged behind them quickly. Now there was nothing before them but night. “How much longer?”

“Four more hours.” He looked her over. “Teach you to fly some other time then? Just two of us? This I will enjoy.”

Maddy wasn’t sure if he was serious, or whether flirting was his only lexicon for communicating with American women. “Do you have any idea what’s going on here?” she asked.

Ari shrugged. “The big man says ask no questions, I ask no ques­tions, and I sleep at night. The ones who do ask—they don’t sleep so well.”

Maddy had to laugh. Ignorance was indeed bliss where Dillon was concerned. Still, she caught Ari pondering the hairs on his arm; the way they had grown denser since picking up their new passengers. Dillon’s effects might have been more pervasive, but they were subtler among the living; the straightening of teeth, and a sort of cellular de­tox—but you couldn’t miss what Winston did to those who hung around him too long. Ari caught her watching him. He brushed his hand across his arm. “I make a hairy man today,” he said, confident in his mis-spoken English. “Like a wolfwere. You like wolfwere men? Hair give you something to grab onto. This you will enjoy.”

Maddy laughed, and he laughed as well, feigning that he was only joking. “Do me a favor,” she told Ari. “Ask me no questions, and I won’t throw you the hell out of the plane.” To think only a few weeks ago, Maddy might actually have entertained such a panting proposi­tion. Dillon had undone in her that need. But he hadn’t truly undone it, had he? He had merely redirected her wandering desires, focusing them all toward him. There was the cruelty in the kindness. But better not to consider that; momentous things were happening here. If she kept that at the center of her focus, perhaps she could find a bliss that was somewhat closer to ignorance.

* * *

“You’re here because you fell victim to your own folly,” Tessic told Dillon, back in the cabin of the plush jet. “Consider this an in­tervention.”

Dillon found Tessic uncomfortably close to his face mask. “Not exactly a divine intervention, is it?” Dillon said.

“No—that would be presumptuous. But time will tell.”

Dillon strained against the titanium exoskeleton, knowing it would not give. “You told me I could come and go as I pleased—that I was not a prisoner.”

Tessic leaned away and sighed. “You and I were not meant to travel the easy path,” he said. “God has a vision for you, Dillon. You must come to accept this. If it takes me locking you down long enough for you to come to your senses, then that is what I must do.”

“I will not be used against my will.”

“It won’t be against your will. You’ll choose what’s right. I have faith in your choices.”

Dillon wondered what choices Tessic could possibly be referring to. His choice to leave Tessic’s protective bubble? His choice to listen to Okoya, and get a glimpse, however fragmentary, of why he and the others might be on this earth? No matter how far the aura of Dillon’s spirit extended out beyond the fuselage of the plane, how much choice in anything did he have when he couldn’t move as much as an inch?

“I could shatter you,” Dillon threatened. “It would only take me a moment to look inside you and find the words to destroy you.”

“But you won’t,” Tessic said, so unconcerned it infuriated Dillon. “You won’t because deep down you know I have a perspective that you lack. You, with all your power of life and death are blinded. You needed Maddy to help you escape from your cell. You need me to help you escape from yourself. Because I see a larger picture that you’ve yet to grasp.”

Dillon thought to the duplicitous Okoya. Okoya, too, had a larger picture. A picture so large, it was beyond Dillon’s scope of compre­hension. But Okoya was self-serving to the last. Everything he told them might be nothing more than a well-conceived lie. If, in the end, his fate was to be used by someone, would he rather be used by Okoya, or Tessic?

“What do you want with me, Elon?”

Tessic offered him a joyless smile. “Have I been so good at hiding myself from you, Dillon? Or is it that you never wanted to see?” He knelt deeper until his eyes were level with Dillon’s. “Look at me now Dillon. Tell me what you see in the patterns of my life. I’ve been keeping something from you. Holding it until it was ripe for you to know. I open for you now, my friend. See into me and you’ll know where we are going, and what is to be done.”

Dillon’s vision was filled with the aspect of his eyes; the care lines and crows feet. A world weariness beneath a muscular mind built by the wielding of heavy power. Dillon probed deeper, finding genuine intentions, sullied by the pain of something lost. Not something but someone. A person. People. Many people. On Tessic’s shoulders rested an unbearable weight, that levied itself upon him the moment Tessic became aware of Dillon’s existence. Because Dillon could undo unspeakable crimes. Now Tessic’s weight became Dillon’s, and he understood.

Tessic backed away. Perhaps he, too, had some level of clairvoy­ance and saw into Dillon’s mind as well. Dillon’s fury of being kid­napped left him. What remained was a spiritual vertigo, and a heady fear, like skydiving into a storm.

Tessic hit a button and the shell of the chair split open. Dillon didn’t move. Barely dared to breathe.

“I can’t do what you’re asking.”

Tessic laughed and clapped his hands together in sheer glee. “Of course you can. It’s why all of you are on this good earth. You must know this by now.”

Dillon closed his eyes. Although the chair no longer embraced him, he felt every bit as enslaved—not by Tessic, but by himself—because Tessic was right. Just as they had sifted Tory from the dust, they could do it again. It was simply a matter of scale.

Dillon shuddered.

If you could save a life, was it a crime to let that life end? If you could restore a murdered life, was it a crime to walk away? What if it were more than one life? What if it were millions?

“When the others awake, you will explain,” Tessic told him. “And they will come to understand, just as you have, this glorious thing you have all been called to do.”

Yes, thought Dillon. There was glory in this, but there was also infamy. There was something right and holy,