Ascent of the Aliomenti by Alex Albrinck Page B

still until they were burning to death, freeing them only to sense their own skin burning off and feel themselves suffocating in the smoke. That’s how he ensured that they knew they were dying.” His own voice choked with emotion as he recalled the sensations he had felt as he’d realized what Adam had done, what Will himself, despite all of his Energy skill and nanotechnology, had been helpless to stop.
    Eva stopped walking, halting so quickly that her arm was stretched via the hand Hope continued to hold. Will continued walking until he realized his hand was no longer sitting upon Eva’s shoulder.
    “There’s more to it than that,” she said. “There must be more to it than that. My brother has never feared to make a difficult decision, has never shied away from taking an action he might find objectionable under normal circumstances if he believed it served a greater good.”
    “Objectionable ?” Will was stunned. “How could he find the cold-blooded murder of fifty people anything but abhorrent?” She seemed immune to the reality of what he’d done. Or was she merely trying to rationalize it away, in an effort to shield herself from the ramifications? Perhaps, like the woman next to her, she was looking for the good out of fear that her relation to mass murderer meant she was capable of similar atrocities.
    “I’m not explaining myself well, Will,” Eva said, and Will heard the fatigue in her voice, fatigue borne of trying to understand what couldn’t be understood. “I am not saying he believes murder is acceptable, any more than I believe it is acceptable. He does not. He has always tried to protect the innocent.” Her eyes flicked in Hope’s direction, and Will was reminded that it was Adam who had argued against Arthur’s scheme, specifically because it would harm a young child. “What that tells me is that there is some missing information that we don’t have, information that Adam did have, and that he felt he needed to act as he did to prevent an even greater tragedy.”
    Will opened his mouth to protest this, and then realized that Adam did have that type of information. “I argued with him immediately after it happened. With Arthur present, he simply said that he found the victims to be too weak-minded to be trusted with Energy abilities, too easily swayed by someone like Arthur. He felt they would be turned to some evil purpose because they’d lacked the character to stand up to evil, just as they’d failed to stand up for Elizabeth.”
    “That’s closer to what I expected,” Eva replied. “But I’m not sure he’d act so quickly unless he knew that Arthur was already in the process of plotting something.”
    “It was me, ” Will whispered. “Adam told me that Arthur was already working to set them on me next.” The cold reality bludgeoned him like a hammer. Fifty people had been murdered before they were able to form a mob and attempt to take his life.
    Will walked in silence, internal demons swirling in his mind. Did this revelation make him complicit in those murders? Adam had thought of it as justice, though none of those people had acted yet, and few were likely to have directly thought of raising a hand against Will. Should Will feel gratitude for Adam’s decision and action, motivated as it had been toward saving Will from attack? It was unlikely they’d be able to penetrate all of Will’s defenses, but Adam had no way to know that was the case.
    He felt the sudden need to act, to do something , as a means of purging that nagging sense that those murders were his fault. The frustration he felt at this moment was complex, in part due to the sudden moral ambiguity over Adam’s action, and in part due to the fact that someone had tried to protect him , and in part because they’d felt there was evidence that he needed protection.
    Mixed in with those concerns was an even larger question: why did Adam care if they did want to kill Will? He had no chance to ask that