Date: Wed, 6 Sep 1995 12:17:17 -0400 Reply-To: GrinnyP@AOL.COM Sender: Highlander TV show stories From: Carol Ann Liddiard Subject: "Origins" Chapter 2, part 2 . . . and the rest of chapter 2 -------------------- Seattle, 1995 "It all started 10 years ago," Carol said as she sipped her water. She knew she had to tread carefully with these two. They were very wary and would spot an obvious lie. "I accidentally witnessed a fight between two of your kind in Los Angeles. I still don't know why I didn't run. I guess it was the fascination of two men sword fighting in the middle of an alley." In her mind she could still see the fight, feel the thrill as she watched two men strive in a beautiful but deadly ballet. Finally, one of the men disarmed the other and beheaded him. The dead immortal must have been very powerful because the resulting quickening was spectacular, shooting out bolts of energy for blocks, driving the winner to his knees. When it was over, his head came up and his glance collided with hers. In a flash she felt the almost sexual thrill that had come over him at the quickening. For a timeless moment they looked into each other's eyes, then a man stepped from the shadows behind the immortal and beheaded him. A cleared throat brought Carol back to the present. She looked at Duncan. "I couldn't understand why it was so shocking when I hadn't reacted to the first beheading that way. The first one, for all its violence, seemed right somehow. But the second one . . ." She trailed off, still looking into the past. "I don't know how to describe it . . . the only word I can come up with is obscene." She looked at Duncan, now firmly in the present. "This time there was no spectacular light show, just a corpse. I followed the man while he took care of the bodies and afterward when he went home." "Wait a minute, just wait a minute." Richie interrupted. "You just followed him? And you didn't get caught?" She looked at Richie. "Of course I realize now how lucky I was that he never spotted me. He was overconfident and wasn't expecting someone to follow him." Duncan turned to the window, showing no emotion. "And why didn't you call the police immediately?" "At first I thought about calling them. When I first saw the man, I thought he looked familiar, but I couldn't quite remember where I'd met him. I figured I could follow him home and give the police his address." Carol looked down and laughed without humor. "There is no one so stupid or convinced of her own immortality than a teenager. When I saw the name on his mailbox, my blood ran cold. He was, and still is a high ranking member of the police department in Los Angeles. Believe it or not, I had met him at some political fund-raiser thing for the mayor. It was only then that I got scared. I figured if I tried to report him to the police that I would 'disappear' like the other two." Richie frowned. "Oh man, that sounds like a bad trip. So what did you decide to do?" Carol stood and walked over to the window Duncan was looking out. Leaning against the sill and following Duncan's gaze she said, "Like I said, there is nothing so stupid as a teenager. My brilliant idea was to find out everything about the policeman and find enough hard evidence to take to his superiors. I figured that I might be safe if I could get pictures of him killing another person, or disposing of the bodies, or something. I was smart enough to realize that I didn't exactly have the tracking or surveillance skills needed. I hired a private investigator, not to follow the man, but to teach me how to follow. And, he introduced me to other people who could teach me things. I learned how to follow someone unobtrusively, all about electronic surveillance devices, and met one ex-NSA guy who taught me some wonderful ways to break into computers. I also took lessons in self-defense and learned how to use various weapons, just in case he noticed my snooping and decided to come after me. It became an obsession with me. When I wasn't learning things, I was following the guy." Duncan turned his head from the window and looked directly at her. "Do you seriously expect me to believe this? Where were your parents? How could you afford all this?" She returned his gaze steadily. "My parents had died six months previously. I think part of the obsession was grief over their deaths. I had just turned 18 when I witnessed the sword fight and somehow I identified that murdered immortal with my parents." She gave Duncan a slight smile. "My folks were loaded, you know. They left me a very generous trust fund when they died. At the time I was trying to decide what to do with my life, and suddenly, I had a purpose." She sighed. "Eventually I found out about the Watchers, and the immortals. But what I really was trying to find out was *why* he had killed that immortal. In the end, he led me to the Hunters." "Hey, I thought they were just a few renegade Watchers." Richie walked over to the window. "You mean there's more to it?" "Much more." She shifted her attention to Richie. "I was able to break into their records and learn their history. They're not just some modern radical offshoot, they've existed within the Watchers from the very beginning. They keep their group small and only recruit the most intensely loyal of the Watchers." She turned back to Duncan. "I 'introduced' myself to one of the young Hunters that I had been watching. I played the part of a young rich girl with nothing to do and he was happy to try and 'recruit' me. They were looking to recruit someone from 'outside' the Watcher enclave. . .someone who wasn't tattooed. Once I got my foot in the door the rest was easy. When they were ready to implement the plan, I made sure I would be a part of it. Then I was able to get the other conspirators alone, one at a time, to plant the post-hypnotic suggestions that allowed me to keep you guys alive without their knowing about it." "So what do you want us to do now?" Duncan asked. "We'll go tell Dawson. If he's forewarned then he and the other Watchers can prevent the takeover. That is, of course, if you believe me." Her gaze never wavered. "Do you believe me?" --------------------- Berri Egoitza, @10,400 BCE (Wise One's report to the council) *I apologize to the council for not giving this report in person, but there is much work that needs to be done and I have little spare time.* *Work proceeds on exploring the various vents of the volcano. Our researchers have found many more stones with a crystalline structure that will be useful to us. Also, the best of our adepts are learning to draw power from the still active volcano. The building to house the research teams is near completion.* *As for the project to turn our cousins into Changed, we are proceeding at a clip. The first candidates are responding well to the treatment, and I expect a breakthrough any day now. Baretasun has expressed some reservations over one of the candidates, a boy called Sagu. The boy is secretive, and there are some aspects of his mind that I cannot probe. However, I feel that this is just good evidence of his potential, this ability to wall off certain portions of his mind. He has some natural ability, and I am loathe to break his privacy to calm Baretasun's doubts. I believe that any day now we will make the breakthrough and the boy will become Changed.* The boy spied Wise One through the doorway, a glowing crystal in his hand. He could already dimly hear some of what was being recorded. He didn't fear discovery, he had already learned that if he concentrated very hard that the Changed couldn't sense him. *. . . I feel that this is just good evidence of his potential . . .,* came through loud and clear. The boy smiled. Wise One, for all his talents, was just as stupid as the elders in his tribe. They didn't know that he was someone special. The people of his tribe made fun of him because he was small for his age. Because he acted timid, they called him Sagu. They didn't know when he took things, or found out when he began killing small animals. Even the "accident" that took the life of his friend Hilgai fooled them. Hilgai had witnessed Sagu taking something from the flint knappers hut, so he had to be eliminated. Sagu continued to watch Wise One hunched over his silly crystal. He smiled as he thought of the friends he had already made among the chidren of the People. They were so eager to please, to cultivate his friendship. As if they thought he really cared. They didn't understand now, but someday they would know his true power. --------------------- Seattle, 1995 Richie waited until Carol walked out the door and turned to Duncan. "Okay Mac, we're alone now. Are we buying _any_ of that?" "Richie, let's just say I'm a little skeptical. I still have lots of questions, like why did she need to hypnotize those men, if that's what she really did? Why is she going to such lengths to make the Hunters believe us dead? She certainly seems to be on our side, but you remember what happened with Pete." Duncan took one last look around the apartment and headed for the door. Richie ran to catch up with Duncan's impatient strides. "Boy, you don't have to remind me about Pete." He shuddered as he remembered the Hunter who had befriended him as part of an elaborate plan by the Hunters. "Hey wait, where are we going?" "To Dawson's place to warn him." "But what if this was a whole elaborate thing to get close to Dawson?" Duncan gave him an incredulous look. "Of course it could be. The only problem with that theory is she knows where he lives and where he works. And, after watching her at work I'm convinced that if she wanted to take him out, she could do it just fine on her own. Having said that, I'm still not letting her out of my sight any more than necessary until we can figure out if she's on the level. Now come on, Richie." --------------------- /Notes/ One of the more interesting aspects of the language of the Herrialdaketa is the shift in meanings caused by the great migration at the beginning of their history. Before part of the tribe followed "One Who Sees" to their first island home, they called themselves the Herri, which literally meant "the People". Once they followed "One Who Sees" they renamed themselves the Herrialdaketa, which meant "the People who Moved". After several hundred years, however, Herrialdaketa came to mean, simply, "the People", and Herri had shifted in meaning to become "the old ones", implying that their original tribe had become little more than a myth to them. When it came to naming their island home, however, they did not use a name which indicated the move in any way. It is lost to history what their original settlement was named, if anything, but once they reached the island they named it Egoitza (Home), a name that indicates no other origins. When they were forced to leave this place because of dwindling resources, they retained the name somewhat when they christened their new dwelling place Berri Egoitza (New Home). The need to make a decision on whether or not to leave their home prompted the Herrikontseilu (council) to call a rare, tribe-wide meeting involving every adult in the community. Normally decisions that affected the entire population were made by the council, but this one was considered too important. For the purposes of this chronicle, the length of the meeting and the arguments that took place there have been shortened. The real meeting lasted three days and nights and resulted in many acrimonious arguments and even a few fights, a rarity in such a normally peaceful people. (to be continued in chapter 3) ----------------------- As usual all questions/comments/flames/criticisms to me at liddiard@bs1.prc.com or GrinnyP@aol.com Carol Ann liddiard@bs1.prc.com GrinnyP@aol.com =========================================================================