Everyone told him, except Ethan who remained silent and watchful. The black man’s wary gaze kept coming back to Ethan, but both the pistol and the rifle were aimed along the aisle so as to swing fast upon anyone they chose to target.
The guns were laid in the aisle. “Thank you,” the man said. “Now folks…you are all going to put your hands behind your head and you are going to walk off this bus single file. Again, I don’t like quick movements and neither do the agents outside. So be very, very careful as you leave and we’ll have no problem. When you get off the bus, you’ll be told what to do.”
Jefferson had heard something that snagged in his head. “Agents? What kind of agents?”
“Secret Service, sir. Now…I want no talking, either. Everyone just be quiet, move carefully and slowly and follow instructions.”
When they got outside, the man in the suit urged everyone along toward the entrance into the White Mansion, which was not only big enough to admit a car, but probably big enough to let a tank rumble through. He stopped Ethan by putting an arm in his way. Ethan kept his hands behind his head as instructed.
“Will, take them all inside,” the man told the Asian. “You just stand where you are,” he said to Ethan.
“Listen,” said Olivia, “we have a lot to tell you.”
“I’m sure you do, and we have a lot of questions to ask you as well. Please go along with the others now. Don, stick here with me for a minute.” One of the men armed with an automatic rifle took a position just beside Ethan.
“Sir, would you tell me your name?” Ethan asked, as his friends were escorted through the opening.
“Bennett Jackson. Yours?”
“Ethan Gaines. Mr. Jackson, I need to tell you that there is a Gorgon warship about forty miles northeast of this position and moving closer. I don’t know if they’re preparing an attack or not, but it would be wise to be ready if possible.”
“A human-looking boy with silver eyes who talks like a fifty-year-old man. That’s a first. Are you a Cypher?”
“No sir.”
“The cameras saw you destroy two gates without a weapon. How’d you do that?”
“I am a weapon,” Ethan said. “May I put my hands down? This is an uncomfortable posture.”
“Frisk him,” Jackson told the other man. It was done quickly and efficiently. Eye contact was kept during the procedure. “Okay Ethan, you can put your hands down.” Jackson looked toward the milky sky to the northeast and then back to the boy. “You’re not a Gorgon or a Cypher—you say—but you’re not human, either. You say you’re a weapon, and I believe what I’ve seen. So what side are you a weapon for?”
“Your side.”
“Uh-huh.” Jackson gave him a thin, cold smile absolutely devoid of humor. “I have seen a lot of things I would never have believed possible two years ago. My wife and my six-year-old daughter are likely dead, back in Washington.” Flames flickered in the olive-green eyes; they were highly dangerous, but they didn’t last long. Ethan knew this man kept his emotions in a tightly sealed box, for fear that letting anything out might tear him to pieces. The loss of his wife had solidified Jackson’s marriage to his job, which Ethan saw in an instant had been a constant demand to him and a point of pride. There were the memories in there of a rough background in a rough neighborhood, scenes of hard military training and a medal of some kind being presented to him. “At least,” Jackson continued, “I hope they died before things got really bad. You’re some kind of creature made by either the Gorgons or the Cyphers, is what I think. You have to be. Are you bringing the Gorgons here? Is that what this is about?”
“No, it’s not.”
“How did you find this place?”
Ethan traveled across the tortured landscape of Bennett Jackson’s mind. He saw within seconds what this mountain held.
“This is the secure location for the President,” Ethan said. “And he’s here.”
“You’ve come to kill him? Or guide the ship in to kill everyone?”
“No. As my friend Olivia said, we have a lot to tell you.”
Jackson removed a small black communications device from within his coat. It had a keypad on it and a yellow, green and red button. He pressed the red one. “Waiting for instructions,” he said into the speaker. Then, to Ethan, “If I took you inside without permission they’d put me in a rubber room before I was shot.”
“If someone here doesn’t listen to me,” said Ethan calmly, “there will be no more they for you to be involved with, if you’re speaking of your human race. The Cyphers and Gorgons won’t stop fighting until this planet is destroyed. Even then they might not stop. Mr. Jackson, I’m here to help you and I’ve come a very long way. Please take me to your President.”
Jackson scanned the northeastern sky once more. A muscle clenched in his jaw. “How do you know the warship’s out there?”
“I can feel its harmonic signature getting stronger.”
“Its what?”
“The composition of its matter sends out a frequency. A vibrational signal I can pick up. All matter does this. The Gorgon ships are easily recognizable from this signal.”
Jackson just stood there like a statue, staring at him.
Ethan finally tapped his skull and said, “I have a radar in here.”
“Jesus Christ,” Jackson said, and narrowed his eyes. “What’re we going to do with you?”
“The wise thing, I hope,” Ethan answered.
Bennett Jackson wore an expression of dismay. He looked to the other man, Don, for some kind of help and got only a shrug. He then seemed to be searching all points of the compass for something to steady his own course. He rubbed at a spot on his forehead as if trying to make the gears in his brain mesh a little better.
A voice came from the communications device: “Bring him in. Room 5A.”
“All right, Ethan,” Jackson said. “Now when we go inside, you’re not going to turn into a creature I’ll have to kill, will you? I would dislike putting a bullet into the head of anything that looks like a human boy, but I’ll do it in an instant. Also, there will be men inside who’ll shoot you to pieces even if you’re quick enough to kill me. So be careful in your movements and walk ahead of me, and I would ask that you return your hands to the back of your head, fingers locked together, and everyone will feel much better. Agreed?”
“Yes,” Ethan said. He did as Jackson told him, and walked toward the opening with Jackson two paces behind him and the other man with the automatic rifle just off to his left.
They entered the White Mansion. The initial chamber looked like a spotless high-tech garage forty feet wide, with a shiny black-painted concrete floor and a ceiling about twenty feet high. Tubes of light ran along the ceiling amid industrial-looking pipes. A metal staircase ascended to a second level. Three black SUVs and a jeep were parked on the garage floor. There were gas pumps, both regular fuel and diesel, a supply of oil drums, tires in racks and batteries on shelves. Ethan saw that his traveling companions had already been spirited away somewhere, and ten or so men—some dressed informally, some in suits, but all clean-shaven and well-fed—had gathered to watch the entrance of the new arrivals, and he figured especially himself. Among them were two uniformed and helmeted soldiers with machine guns. Ethan sensed the low hum of power and felt a great source of energy here, and it both perplexed and interested him.