“Daddy? Can I leave the house today?”
I was sixteen at the time. Mom and Dad had left the house several times, but Austin and I were under house arrest.
“I hope so,” he replied. “Somebody has hacked the government computers and has been tracking our family’s movements. Mom has almost finished writing the code she needs to shut it down.”
“Why is it okay for the government to track us, but not someone else?”
“It’s not …” he said, “… but the government has been tracking us for two hundred years; so people just put up with it. Luckily, we’re pretty good at fooling the government. Besides, there’s a big difference between a government that’s tracking everyone in the country and someone who is specifically tracking just our family.”
“Ready for another test walk?” Mom asked. “Jocie, Dad and I are going to walk around the block, clockwise. I need you and Austin to wait for five minutes, and then follow us. Look at cameras and up into the sky, if you hear drones.”
Austin and I walked slowly, enjoying the fresh air. There were eight visible cameras along the route and five that were hidden, plus a high level drone. When we got back, Mom and Dad were at a screen.
“Our faces have been recorded too many times,” Mom said. “The system is still fifty percent sure it was us and thirty percent sure it was Austin.”
“What about me?” I asked.
“There isn’t enough sample size of your features to make the match; so I was able to erase you from the system.”
The “success” made me mad, as I once again felt second rate, but Dad smiled.
“Perfect,” he said.
******
“Let me get this straight,” Zera says, over the breakfast table the next morning. “One of the two-hundred-year-old roof joists just happens to have the right mixture of metals to make the arena we need?”
“Arenas,” Austin corrects. “I need to make two.”
“And it was never the boy wonder who was going. It was always Jocie,” Zera says.
“That’s right,” I say.
“And your father has known about all of this for years, but instead of writing some of it down, he wrote ‘The puzzle leads the way’ in invisible ink on a barn wall?”
She looks at me and Austin, and we shrug.
“Your family is seriously messed up.”
“According to Uncle Cameron, your mom is quite the piece of work …” I say, “… and you haven’t told us anything about your dad.”
“You don’t want to hear about him,” Zera says.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, me too,” she replies.
We finish breakfast in silence and head for the barn. A replacement joist is already sitting in the barn, and Austin starts rigging a lift drone to help us get it into place before we remove the one made of metal. While he works, Zera turns on a screen she found in one of the stalls and watches the news.
“Jocie! Come watch this,” she calls. Austin follows me.
When we get there, Zera orders the news piece to replay from the beginning.
“Tyrone Bauer, CEO of Chi-One Corporation, announced a recent attack on a facility owned by the space and satellite division of his company,” the announcer says. “Surveillance video shows a group of assailants, dressed in black, cutting the fence of the remote Australian facility and engaging in a gun battle that left eight security guards stunned before a larger force arrived to repel the attack.”
“That’s my Mom!” Zera says, and points at the security footage. “I’d know her anywhere.”
In the footage, Zip can be seen shooting a security guard.
He had no clue she was there. She could have disabled him silently, but she gave away her position on purpose.
“Computer, give us the live satellite footage of this facility on the same time index as the attack we just saw,” I say.
“Hey!” Zera says. “You’ll miss the part where Mom takes out two guards at once.”
The satellite footage appears on the screen, zoomed to the point where we can see a team of eight people cutting the fence.
“Zoom out to show the entire facility and one hundred meters outside the fence,” I say.
When Zip shoots the guard, we watch as multiple security teams from all over the facility run to repulse the attack. Then two people in black emerge from the bush on the opposite side of the facility, cut the fence, and break into the building.
Zip’s team keeps the guards pinned down for over five minutes. She had superior cover and clearly better marksmen, but never advanced when she had obvious opportunities. When the two who entered on the opposite side exit the building, Zip’s team withdraws.
“Computer, maximum zoom on the two people who entered the building on the north side,” I say.
“That’s Aunt Cindi and Uncle Cameron,” Austin says.
“Why are they attacking known Christians?” Zera asks.
“Computer, what’s made at this facility?” I ask.
“Unknown,” the computer replies.
Unknown? Since when is anything unknown to the government?
“Computer, zoom in on the loading dock,” I say.
There are pallets of long metal rods, each about five meters long. In all, there are several metric tons of metal sitting on the dock.
“Computer, show us the loading dock at nine o’clock the next morning.”
The metal rods are still there.
“Computer, given the reflective qualities of the metal bars visible in the image, what metals are they most likely to be?”
“Titanium, chromium, molybdenum, vanadium.”
******
“Do you think Dad is mad at me for giving Five-X the composite formula?” Austin asks, as he rigs the last pulley.
The lift drone wasn’t strong enough to get the old wooden joist off the ground; so Austin and Zera are going to assist it with ropes, while I wait up in the rafters to swing it into position.
“Whatever Tyrone and Five-X are doing, I doubt that you made Dad’s efforts to stop it any easier,” I reply, “but you know Dad. He doesn’t stay mad at anyone. He just moves on and tries to figure out what’s going to happen next.”
“They could make thousands of shielded drones with our material,” he says. “It would give them a big advantage over the Temple Guard.”
The drone starts to lift, and Austin and Zera add their efforts with the ropes and pulleys.
“The Chi-One company has a separate division for drones,” I say. “That facility is part of their space and satellite division. What uses would the composite have in space?”
“Plenty,” Austin says, between grunts as he lifts. “It would make a great heat shield, for one.”
“Why would they need a heat shield?” I ask.
“Space is cold, but there’s no atmosphere to block the sun’s energy; so things in space will heat up.”
“Hold science class later,” Zera says. “He doesn’t lift as hard when he’s talking.”
Although the drone sounds strained to its limit, the joist reaches the correct height, and I swing it into place, and secure it temporarily. Austin reprogrammed a smaller drone that was originally designed to maintain the fences around the horse pasture to finish the job, and it now zips around with nails and screws. When it’s done, it will cut up the metal joist, while the bigger lift drone eases the pieces to the floor.
The lifting was hard work, and Zera removes her jacket, revealing the tattoo on her upper arm again - a cross with black lines coming out of it.
Of course. Why didn’t I see it before?
“Your father was a cult hunter,” I say. “That’s what your tattoo means, doesn’t it? He was a cult hunter who became a Christian - just like Daniel.”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Austin asks.
“It’s just easier to pretend to be one of The Washed,” Zera says.
“You are one of The Washed,” I reply.
“No, I’m not. Not really. It may be recessive, but I carry ‘The Mark of the Beast’ gene.”
“That doesn’t matter to us; you know that, right?” I ask.
“You say that, Jocie, but the faces and the noises you make, whenever you see the dark lines on someone’s face, make me think you feel otherwise. You immediately judge those black lines whenever you see them.”
“I don’t mean to sound like I’m judging. It’s just whenever I see someone who was a cult hunter, I think of what happened to Dad inside the mountain.”
“Your father was a cult hunter too, Jocie. I’m told that Cephas is still credited with the longest kill list in The Corps. Do you judge him on that?”
“No.”
“Of course not. You judge your father on what’s in his heart. Allow me to do the same for mine.”
******
Austin and Zera spend the rest of the day transforming the barn into a mini production facility, while I start making drawings.
“What are you doing?” Austin asks.
“Designing an arena cage for you to build.”
“You create the puzzle? I figured it was Dad.”
“Dad’s not here; so unless you want the job, it must be me.”
“That’s why you wouldn’t look at the pieces that are under Bethany House,” he says. “You were afraid if you saw them before you create them, you’d cause a paradox.”
I can’t help myself. I laugh out loud.
“Zera’s right,” I say. “Our family is messed up. I’m sure other families talk about time paradoxes for fun, but how many do you know that actually worry about creating one?”
“Nobody loves messed up people more than God,” Austin replies.
“Good … because here’s another product of a messed up, Paulson brain.”
I hand him a drawing of a long, flat piece of metal with cuts out of it.
“Can you create this with the composite?” I ask.
“You need the precision on the cuts to be down to the millimeter?” he asks.
“If this is going to be a Paulson family time travel device, it might as well be one that only we can put back together.”
******
While Austin fiddles with the equipment in the barn, I find Zera.
“Care for a run in the hills with me?” I ask.
“I’m not into running, like you guys are.”
“What if I said you should bring a stun gun with you?”
“I’d say that’s my kind of a run,” she replies.
We tell Austin and Wendy not to expect us back until dark, and then set off. The easiest way to our destination would be to run along the hover bus line, but I don’t want to risk being seen. Instead, we take to the woods and use various game trails.
“Where are we going?” Zera asks, when we reach the edge of the Cacapon River. I start to wade across and she follows.
“All houses in the Four network had back-up locations. The back-up for Bethany House was an abandoned place called Timber Ridge Camp, which is just through those trees. I’m hoping we’ll find some old computers there that we can use to control the time machine.”
We’re just twenty meters into the woods, when something catches my eye. I tap Zera on the shoulder and we both instinctively get low. Forty meters in front of us, someone is standing silently behind a tree.
“Is it a trap?” Zera whispers.
“They’re wearing awfully bright colors for someone setting a trap,” I say.
Without warning, the person yells, “Ready or not, here I come!” and starts stalking in the other direction.
“It’s nice of them to warn us,” Zera says.
“It’s not a trap,” I say. “It’s an ancient children’s game called ‘Hide and Seek.’”
“I thought you said this place is abandoned.”
We hear a scream, followed by giggling and running. None of them are coming our way; so we move off to the right until we can see a broad lawn and some buildings. There seem to be kids everywhere. Most of them are playing games, but one group of older kids is reading from bibles as they’re taught a lesson by an adult.
“It’s a Christian summer camp,” I say.
“My summer camp involved obstacle courses and target practice,” Zera says.
“Have you noticed anything about the kids?” I ask.
“Just that they’re all happy.”
“Look at their faces,” I say.
“Some are washed, and some are marked,” she concludes.
“And it doesn’t make any difference to them; so, if nothing else, at least this place isn’t part of Five-X.”
“That’s great, but it doesn’t tell us where to look for an old Four back-up house.”
I look around. Every building I can see has been perfectly restored on the outside but with indications of modernization. There’s no way a building could have been gutted, without finding a hidden entrance.
“It will be an old building that hasn’t been restored,” I say. “The closer it is to the woods and the river, the better.”
We continue to walk around the perimeter, until we find an old shack that’s locked with an ancient padlock. It has a window on each side, but they’ve been covered with paint so we can’t see what’s inside. We’re about to slip back into the woods, when we hear a voice from behind us.
“Shouldn’t you girls be in a bible study right now?” the woman’s voice asks.
We turn around.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say. “We’re sorry.”
She smiles.
“No harm done. Off you go.”
Zera and I sit with the group of older kids who are on the lawn listening to an older man as he reads from the bible. He acknowledges our arrival, but continues to teach.
“You have been permitted to understand the secrets of the Kingdom of Heaven, but others have not. To those who are open to my teaching, more understanding will be given, and they will have an abundance of knowledge. But to those who are not listening, even what they have will be taken away from them. That is why I tell these stories, because people see what I do, but they don’t really hear, and they don’t understand.”
He pauses for effect.
“Cephas Paulson was hidden in a bush when our Lord Jesus spoke those words to His disciples, but then the Lord turned and looked directly at Cephas, and said: ‘But blessed are your eyes, because they see; and your ears, because they hear. I assure you, many prophets and godly people have longed to see and hear what you have seen and heard, but they could not.’”
He looks around at the faces in front of him.
“In all the years since he came back to this time, Cephas has never said a word about it - other than that it happened. Why not?”
None of the kids volunteer to answer the question.
“Come on,” the man coaxes. “The Lord Himself told Cephas Paulson that his eyes and ears are blessed! Why hasn’t he claimed the honor that is due to him? Why is Cephas Paulson not standing in the pulpit of all pulpits so we can adore him?”
The group remains silent.
“Because it wasn’t a personal blessing,” I say.
The group turns to look, and a broad smile crosses the man’s face.
“What do you mean?” he asks.
“The Lord may have been looking Cephas in the eyes at the time, but Cephas knew that the blessing is meant for everyone who believes in Jesus. All of our eyes and ears are blessed, because we’ve all opened our hearts to Him,” I say.
“Hallelujah!” the man says. “The Lord may have chosen to meet Cephas when He was here on earth, but He’s chosen to love all of us the same. Cephas has never claimed to have favor with God, and he has never claimed that The Washed or anyone else has favor with God. I ask you all to walk with the Lord with that same spirit of humility. Look at your brothers and sisters in Christ the way Christ sees them. Their sins are washed with His blood, and they are flawless.”
I don’t know what this place is, but it sounds and feels like home.