Broken Angels Read online

  They waited for three silent minutes until an empty cab arrived. After entering, Robert pushed the button for the door to close, selected a key on his keychain and stuck it into a slot near the buttons. He then pushed the button for the highest level.

  At the top level, the door didn’t open. Instead, the cab began to vibrate.

  “What’s happening?” Ava asked.

  “It’s turning around.”

  When it stopped, the door opened onto complete blackness. Robert adjusted his vision until he saw through the opaque wall of nothing. There was another elevator ten feet away. He moved forward with Ava close behind. He pressed some of his fingers against a pad next to the second elevator and stooped down so his eye was level with the iris scanner. The door opened, but Ava hesitated. The inside of the cab was as pitch black as the space outside it. Robert waved her inside.

  “The door will shut in less than seven seconds.”

  She just made it.

  After the door closed, Robert again touched some of his fingers to a pad and looked into a scanner. The cab began to move. After a long, silent descent, the door opened. They stepped out into a darkened corridor.

  “Follow me,” Robert said.

  He led Ava through halls and around corners, down stairways and through several doors. They didn’t pass anyone. The place seemed deserted. But Robert knew better.

  When they reached Adam’s office door, Robert pressed his fingers to the keypad and lowered his head until his eye was level with the scanner. For the second time that day, he heard the recorded voice announce, “Enter, Mister Goldner.”

  The two stepped into a room lit by three low-wattage lamps. Robert was surprised to find Adam already waiting behind the reception area’s desk. He was even more shocked to find Darryl sitting in one of the three metal chairs in front of it.

  “Come in, both of you,” Adam said as he gestured toward the two empty chairs. “I ask you to please excuse the dimness, Miss Darden, but I am sure you can see just fine.”

  “Yes, thank you.” Ava sat in the seat next to Darryl. Robert sat on the other side of her and then scooted his chair back a few inches so he could get a clearer view of Darryl. The sleeves of Darryl’s shirt were rolled up to his elbows, and a bandage was on his left forearm. Must’ve been a tough charity case.

  “I am Adam Smith, chairman of the Isaac-Abraham Institution.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Ava said with a respectful nod.

  “First, I would like to know if you are feeling okay,” Adam said, “considering everything you have been through over the past few days.”

  “Yes,” Ava said. “I guess I’m feeling as well as I can be, considering.”

  Yes—what was she feeling? As far as Robert could detect, she didn’t seem the least bit put off by Adam’s exoskeletal suit or his atypical manner of speaking. Then again, Robert didn’t have a full view of her face, and the funhouse reflection on the front of Adam’s helmet was of little help. Ava’s actual facial expression may’ve revealed something her tone of voice didn’t.

  “Good,” Adam said. “For now, I just want you to relax. I did not ask Mister Goldner to bring you here for an interrogation. I wanted him to bring you to a place where you could be sure, and we could be sure, that you would be safe.”

  “Thank you,” Ava said.

  “I have also called Miss Goins, our medical specialist. She is on her way here to have a quick look at you. Then you will be shown to one of our secure apartments so that you may get some rest. But before all of that, I thought it would be wise to tell you what we are all about.”

  Ava nodded as she crossed her right leg over her left.

  “The Isaac-Abraham Institution,” Adam said, “is a nonprofit research center that is devoted to the advanced study of familial relations—how and why families disintegrate, how we can put them back together, and how we can keep them that way. That is a very basic summation. We advise and disseminate the results of our research to federal, state, and local government entities, social workers, and many others who share our goals.

  “The Institution began as a three-person operation. Me, two associates, a few computers, and a rapidly growing electronic and paper library of information. It was my associates who came up with the name for the Institution, names not being a very strong area for me…”

  Ava cocked her head a little.

  “You see,” Adam continued, “eight years ago, I was severely crippled, and my subsequent recovery only brought me so far to a state of normalcy. In the wake of my accident, I lost quite a bit of my memory, the most valuable parts, almost everything having to do with my personal history. My name, knowledge of my family…But during my recovery process, I came to believe the answers to my past would lie in the work I could do for the future. I retained important pieces and bits of other types of knowledge I had acquired during my travels through life, and I put that knowledge to use while trying to find the most significant parts of both my past and my future—my children.”

  When Adam paused, Robert saw Ava lower her head and whisper something. He couldn’t quite make it out.

  “Yes, Miss Darden?” Adam asked. “Do you have a question?”

  Ava’s head jerked up. “Oh, I’m sorry, sir. I was just, uh…”

  Robert figured something Adam had said triggered something within her, something causing her to fall into a momentary trance and whisper something to herself. Instructions, maybe. The sight of it just added to Robert’s unpleasant feeling about all of this.

  Ava cleared her throat. “You’re saying you lost most knowledge of your background, but you remembered you had children?”

  “That is one of the few bits of which I am certain, yes. I just do not remember how many, or any definite names. It must sound strange, I know, but I believe that however many there are, at least one of them has a name that rhymes or comes close to rhyming with the letter ‘R,’ or the word ‘air.’ Possibly Claire, Carey, Blaire, Aaron… The possibilities are many, but not endless.

  “However, as our research on my past seemed to lead us only in circles, and as our resources began dwindle, we thought it would be a wise idea to expand our mission and our search. Six years ago, we offered to assist the Heartland Security Agency with part of its mission—a mission for which it did not have the manpower at the time—in exchange for government grant money. As we began to acquire other types of researchers and specialists, and a substantial amount of private donations from various sources, we offered to assist the Agency in other ways as well. Now we have come to the point where the Agency and the Institution assist each other as we both stretch and reach for the goals of strong, unbreakable families—the fundamental units of a truly secure society.”

  “Noble idea,” Ava said.

  “We all think so,” Darryl said.

  Robert shot a glance at him, barely managing to suppress the rude noise that came close to leaving his lips.

  “The scores of individuals who are now part of the Institution,” Adam said, “each of us is here to help benefit society, to give it a peace it has never truly had, but most of us are also here to recover missing pieces from our own lives. I do not know how much Mister Goldner has told you of his own story, but both he and Mister Ridley are without parents. We have several other young adults and teenagers who are with us. They too have lost their parents.”

  “They—” Ava turned to look at both of them. “You two are orphans?”

  “Yes,” Adam answered on their behalf, “Mister Goldner, Mister Ridley, and all of the other specially gifted orphans here were recovered either by us or, almost by accident, by certain law enforcement agencies while their agents and officers were carrying out their other duties. All of the orphans had parents who either died or disappeared or, in some of the rare two-parent households, both. Because of their status, and because each of them happened to be endowed with abilities the world does not fully understand or appreciate, they were each given a choice to be temporarily adopted by the In
stitution for the duration of that crucial stage: the passage through adolescence into full maturity. We offered food, shelter, loaner cars, a generous allowance, and all sorts of real-world training in exchange for their assistance with some of our research projects. And they accepted.

  “Mister Ridley and Mister Goldner here make up one of our many Watcher units. They are responsible for assisting the Institution by doing field research. Primarily, they assist us, and the government, with locating and recovering missing children. We also have an advisory committee of adults. These individuals take time out from their full-time jobs to assist the Institution with their expertise, in areas ranging from medicine to law to physical therapy to engineering to psychology and many others. And then there is the board. It controls the Institution. We board members came to be referred to as ‘MatchMakers’; I believe Mister Levy, one of our government liaisons, came up with that term, I suppose for our stated goal and occasional success in matching children to their rightful guardians. All together, we like to think of ourselves as one tight-knit community.”

  “Robert told me that everyone, everyone in this community, is like me.”

  “Not exactly like you, Miss Darden,” Adam said, “but yes, almost everyone affiliated with the Institution has been blessed in such a way as to set them apart from most of humanity. And there are others who have been similarly blessed, at least in their own eyes. They are not a part of this community, or any other true community.”

  Robert saw an odd reflection in Adam’s mask. Was Ava smiling? He repositioned himself in his chair to get a better view of her face. He’d a feeling her expressions were about to tell on her.

  “There are young adults in this and other areas,” Adam said, “most falling within the range of thirteen to thirty years of age, who also seem to lack parents and responsible guidance. They wander the streets and haunt certain locales. They are specially touched, like us, but unlike us, they use their gifts and abilities to assist them as they maim and torture and murder others, and escape detection and capture by those who would stop them.”

  “Fallen angels,” Ava said, almost whispering again.

  “That is one way of putting it,” Adam said. “But we and the authorities have classified them as ‘The Infinite Definite,’ or ‘The ID’ for short. We have only managed to gather a relatively small amount of information on them, but then there is only so much information we could gather on a rootless, faceless gang that operates under the principle of Leaderless Insistence.”

  “Leaderless Insistence?” Ava said.

  “Go to your core, submit to your basest urges, and do what comes naturally,” Darryl said as he rubbed his bandage. “That’s what it means, and that’s what they do.”

  “They are a terrorist gang without any known leader,” Adam said. “And as they can manipulate light like you do, they are quite adept at hiding their faces, their identities, escaping detection for long periods.”

  Adam went silent. It was only for a few seconds, but it was long enough for Ava’s thick, cold surface to begin to crack. She uncrossed her legs as her shoulders tensed. She was becoming defensive before she even said anything, before anyone could even say it to her outright. She looked from Adam’s smooth, featureless mask to the detailed, staring faces of Darryl and Robert.

  “What?” she said. “Are you accusing me of being a part of that? Of being one of them?”

  “I am not,” Adam said. “But I thought by making you aware of them, it might help you to remember if you have ever encountered their like. Say, recently.”

  “I don’t think—” Ava began to respond but stopped. Robert guessed why. As she’d said, this angel doesn’t lie. She probably couldn’t even tell an outright lie about herself to save herself.

  “They travel in pairs,” Robert said. His eye stared at her, but in his mind he was replaying what he’d seen on the videos he’d studied earlier in the day. “Tribes of two. That’s the closest they come to being organized. We happen to know you can handle yourself pretty well physically. And, based on your last known association—”

  “Robert, what—?” Ava turned as much of her body toward him as her chair would allow. “What association?”

  “Marie-Lydia McGillis.” He answered her with just a twist of frost in his tone. She appeared ready to lunge at him; if she did, it would help prove his point. “She’s a definite fallen angel, as you yourself have admitted. And, as we’ve found, a very, very close friend of yours back when you two were classmates.”

  Ava stared wide-eyed at him; she had no words. He responded with a cold glare. He also saw that Darryl was now looking at him instead of Ava. He wanted to tell Darryl he could’ve reached the same conclusion if only he’d joined in the research after they left the hospital that morning, but he kept his neck rigid, kept facing toward Ava, kept waiting for her to—admit, deny—say something.

  “Robert, I told you I was trying to stop her! I did stop her!”

  “And after that, what?” Robert said. “You two went to XynKroma together. When you came out, maybe you were more like her? A fractioned memory, and more than a year missing from any public record. With a profile like that, we are smack-dab in Infinite-Definite territory. A territory of young mentally mangled terrorists.”

  Earlier, she’d accused him of being honest. He could only hold back his honest suspicions of her for so long.

  “That’s enough, Goldner,” Darryl said.

  “Yes,” Adam said. “Miss Darden, please understand we are not accusing you of anything.”

  “I understand fine,” she said.

  “But Mister Goldner is correct in asserting your friend is most likely, in some way, connected with The Infinite Definite. We are well aware of the damage she caused in your hometown. And we have many strong reasons to believe she is now in the Washington metropolitan area. We desperately need your assistance in finding her so she may be rehabilitated and reunited with her family.”

  Ava stared down at the glass desk, her lips scrunched together.

  “As I said,” Adam continued, “I did not call you here for an interrogation, and I will not force you to help us. It is your decision. But please, sleep on it. And know that, whatever you decide, you may stay with us for as long as you need to.”

  Ava raised her head. Her lips began to slowly part, as if she had something to say. They quickly closed again when a recorded voice spoke from behind her.

  “Enter, Miss Goins.”

  Sam entered and nodded greetings at everyone before saying to Adam, “My apologies, but I got here as fast as I could.”

  “It is okay, Miss Goins,” Adam said. “We were just having a nice little chat.”

  “Quite a scare you gave us,” Sam said to the back of Ava’s head. “We feared we’d lost you again.”

  “No.” Ava didn’t look at any of them as she spoke. “Not yet.”

  “Miss Darden, if you prefer to go straight to bed, Miss Goins will be happy to show you to the apartment we have prepared for you, but I strongly suggest you let her look you over and give you a quick physical examination before you turn in. We do not want to find out about any injuries later than we need to.”

  “No,” Ava said as she rose from her chair. “That is the last thing we need.” She didn’t look once at Robert or Darryl as she turned and only glanced at Sam’s smiling face before lowering her eyes toward the floor. Sam prepared to reopen the door.

  “Oh, Miss Darden?” Adam said. “I did have one question for you.” She turned toward him. “Yes?”

  “Where did you get that necklace?”

  Robert focused his eye on the pendant as Ava pressed the dimesized diamond between her fingers, holding it up and away from her skin as she gazed at it. It looked to him as if she were appraising it, deciding on what it was worth to her, what she would get out of telling this interested audience about it. Or maybe she was slipping into another short trance.

  “It was a gift,” Ava said. “From an old instructor.”


  “I see,” Adam said. “Very lovely.”

  “Very generous teacher,” Darryl said.

  Sam and Ava stepped into the hall after Adam bid them good night. Robert heard Ava ask for directions to the nearest bathroom. After the door slid shut, there was a period of silence.

  Robert wanted to stand up and stretch but thought it would be rude to be the only one. It could be taxing having an extended meeting with the chairman, a man who barely moved his head or even his hands while he spoke.

  “She knows more than she has said,” Adam said.

  “And what she has said,” Robert said, “is enough to for us to know she’s trouble.”

  Darryl sighed as he lowered his head, shut his eyes, and pinched a thumb and forefinger on the bridge of his nose. “All right, Goldner,” he said with a strained voice. “Why the attitude?”

  “You mean the attitude of wanting to find the redheaded girl?” Robert asked. “Marie-Lydia McGillis? Remember her? Don’t you share that attitude? Or maybe you’re too preoccupied trying to find your next—”

  “Mister Goldner, please,” Adam said. “I believe Mister Ridley simply wants to know why you accused Miss Darden of being in league with The Infinite Definite.”

  “I didn’t. I—” Robert took a deep breath. “Well, not directly. But she’s in league with someone. And, with all due respect, sir, I think it’s a bad idea, a very bad idea, to bring her into The Burrow. She escaped from a room in a secure wing of the hospital, tracked down where I lived, broke into my apartment without setting off any of Zel’s security devices, and took almost a complete inventory of my place. All that has shown me she’s resourceful. And sly. And everything she’s said, put together with what I’ve gathered from my review of the Institution’s materials on her, tells me she’s definitely been trained and prepared by someone, for some purpose.”

  “Fine,” Darryl said. “But you know those affiliated with The ID aren’t like that. They’re more erratic, like wild animals.”