Chapter 9:
(09/15/01)
Following the cabal’s battle with Bishop and Isabella’s ultimate defeat of him, the cabal took some time to rest and recuperate. In particular, a number of the mages put effort into finding out exactly what Sadira was. Everyone knew that she gave off an enormous Prime signature, like the men and women who had been hunting her down, but no one could figure out what she was or what she could do, no matter how much they researched it. Marcus offered to become a mentor of sorts to Sadira and began teaching her a number of new “techniques” (as he called them). On the more banal side of things, Saxon (who had developed a huge crush on her) introduced her to TV and continued getting closer to her.
One morning at breakfast, Ripple asked Jennifer for a favor: would she help her locate her mentor, Timber, since she hadn’t spoken to him in a long time? Jennifer found Timber’s address with barely any effort. Ripple contacted him shortly thereafter and spoke to him for awhile, but was unable to renew their friendship to the (sexual) extent that she would’ve liked.
A few days later, everyone woke up to find that Sadira was gone. Saxon went downstairs to ask Marcus (who had been staying in the basement 24-7 and all but refusing food for a very long time now) about it, but he claimed to know nothing. The only person missing was Wan, who had left a note saying he was in Chinatown, and the cabal began wondering if he might have taken Sadira with him. Everyone packed up and headed for Chinatown.
In Chinatown, Ripple latched onto Sadira’s Prime trail and followed it to a restaurant. Everyone asked about Sadira and Wan, but no one at the restaurant would give them any information. However, Ripple detected Sadira in the building next door (right through a wall and across an alley, in fact). Everyone sat down to think and was just about to hatch a plan when Ripple got frustrated, jumped out the window, and was immediately shot at by a large number of men with guns who were lying in wait of “intruders.” After a lengthy discussion of what the cabal wanted and who they were looking for, they learned that Wan was with his employer, Lo Pan, but no one knew where Sadira was. Ripple asked to see Wan and learned he was with Lo Pan, with whom the cabal was granted an audience.
Lo Pan turned out to be a creepy Asian mage for whom Wan had been working since returning to Earth. He claimed not to know who Sadira was, but he offered even better information than anything the cabal could know about Sadira if anyone would agree to work for him. Everyone declined but Michael. Lo Pan took Wan away to work and Michael away to sign a contract. Everyone else left, confused and disappointed.
On the way out, the cabal got separated into several smaller groups. Bria and Saxon got the most lost and found themselves descending deeper into Lo Pan’s headquarters. Soon, they came to a dungeon-like area and began hearing the sounds of people screaming in pain and terror and became very frightened. Suddenly, Lo Pan appeared before them, told them they were not allowed to be in that part of his home, and kicked them out onto the street with Correspondence. A number of other members of the cabal heard similar noises as well as they made their way to the exits, but no one knew what they meant.
The strangest thing, however, was yet to come. When the cabal returned to the chantry, they found Sadira sitting in her room, seeming perfectly fine. A brief conversation revealed that she knew nothing about Chinatown or Lo Pan and only remembered being in the chantry all day long. Everyone was beyond confused, but too tired to explore the mystery further at that moment.
Several days later, Jennifer was wandering through the Digital Web, looking for information on several of her pet projects. By what seemed like pure chance, she came across a huge room that appeared to be an abandoned area of the Technocratic web. It was full of data, so she sat down and began going through it. Before long, she started finding a huge amount of documents that mentioned Gabriel by name. Jennifer memorized the location of the room, found Gabriel, and told him to come check the place out. When she showed it to him, he began going through the data at an incredibly fast speed. After only a few minutes, he said to her, “Jack out,” and she did. After they had both returned to the “real” world, she asked him what he’d done, and he said he’d destroyed the data. When Jennifer asked why, Gabriel told her that the data had pertained to his life as a member of the Technocracy—a past he’d entirely forgotten when the Technocracy mind-wiped him. Calling up a picture of himself with a woman and a young child, he said, “This was my life,” and began to cry.
Shortly thereafter, Marcus emerged from the basement for the first time in weeks, seeming almost happy. He invited everyone to come to lunch with him at a local Olive Garden, and everyone agreed. In the restaurant, everyone was seated except Marcus, who immediately walked into the kitchen, saying, “I’m going to go check on the special of the day.” Several minutes later, he emerged, sat down, and ordered the Tour of Italy. When his food came, he immediately asked for a doggie bag without taking a single bite. Everyone else ate their lunch silently, wondering what the hell was going on.
Back at the chantry, Marcus surprised everyone by inviting them into his basement room. There, he performed a bizarre experiment on the leftover Tour of Italy by putting it under a force field and dripping stomach acid onto it. As soon as the acid hit the food, it morphed into a freakish beast with tentacles. Marcus explained that the food contained eggs for a Nephandi construct that would eventually control the mind and body of anyone who ate it and force them to serve evil. The man who had died a few weeks before had apparently had an allergic reaction to it. Marcus knew that this was the work of Ahreen, a very powerful Nephandi who had been his arch-nemesis for years. Finally, he had the resources and the power to attempt to strike back at her and earn his revenge, and he was asking the members of the cabal for help.
Then, Gabriel added that he hoped the cabal would be willing to help him with his personal quest as well. He explained that he had been one of the original Virtual Adepts to defect from the Technocracy, and during that split his former employers captured him and wiped his memory. The information that Jennifer had found for him had helped him to fill in most of the gaps in his memory. Most importantly, he had learned that he had a wife, Elaine, and a son, Tim, who were still members of the Technocracy, and apparently both still alive and working at a nearby Progenitor compound. (This information completely shocked and dismayed Jennifer.) Now that he knew where they were, he wanted to go to the compound and see them in an attempt to make some sort of peace with them and close that chapter in his life.
Everyone agreed to help both Gabriel and Marcus on their missions, and decided that they would begin by going with Gabriel to the Technocratic compound. They agreed to leave several days later, and set about preparing for the raid.
It didn’t take Michael long to figure out that the entire thing was suspicious. The information had been too easy to come by, for one thing. It was also strange that Tim, a high-ranking member of Iteration X, would be hanging out in a Progenitor compound in the first place. When combined with the fact that Gabriel was near the top of Iteration X’s hit list, it wasn’t hard for Michael to conclude that it was a trap. He tried to explain this, but Gabriel said he didn’t really care and needed to see his wife and son, no matter what the cost.
A few days before leaving for the compound, Jennifer sat down with Gabriel and asked him to tell her what was going on, since she had no idea what to expect once they got inside. He gave her a Trinary deck he had made especially for her, and said that all he really needed was for the rest of the cabal to be there to back him up, since they had become like a family to him. Then, he told her the entire painful story of his past—how he had fallen in love with Elaine but had been unable to convince her to leave the Technocracy when Alan Turing started the Adepts’ revolt, how he had hesitated too long trying to break through her conditioning and caused many Adepts to be lost, how when he finally broke free the Technocracy caught up to him and wiped his mind completely. He admitted he wasn’t sure he’d come out of the compound alive, but said he knew he’d never be happy with the cabal unless he could put that part of his life to rest. Knowing she might not get another chance, Jennifer told Gabriel she loved him.
“I love you, too,” he said before she walked away. “And I wish things could be different than they are. That’s why we have to make things different—so that someday we can be together, the way it’s supposed to be.”