The Secret Life of Tom Bradbury

Chapter Five: Fracturing the Frozen Pond

Delia should have been a doctor. She could have been the doctor who changed modern medicine’s healing practices and would have been the face of modern medicine if they hadn’t expunged her research. But she believed in her faculty heads, believed in her mentor and realized too late that none of them were in medicine for healing.

They had all been compromised, cornered and then corrupted. What had been taken from her had been stolen from humanity. Now, what they were on the precipice of doing with her work would ruin the free world. Forever.

She hadn’t dreamed of being a doctor. In fact, far from it, Delia always wanted to be a dancer. She would spend hours sitting on the porch of her grandfather’s small home set on the inlet shore of the North Sea. In the winter days, she would sit near the heat of the fire from the hardwood and pines burning in his front yard watching the surf. Delia would fall into daydreams watching the snowflakes fall towards the undulating waves, then as they were about to melt into the kiss of the briny water, the crystalline fairies would lift away, curl, twist and dive again. Her grandfather would bring her a mug of warm cocoa, then sit with her and ask, “What do you see, datterdatter?”

To further her daughter’s chances for acceptance into the institutions of higher education, Delia’s mother demanded that English was to be spoken inside the home, but her grandfather knew the value of keeping their language alive. Delia would look up her grandfather’s face, creased from years of sun and sea; his eyes held the same blue hue of the glaciers dotting their homeland; smiling at his persistence to speak in their native tongue, disregarding her mother’s demand

Answering the Norwegian word for granddaughter, Delia would tell him, “I am watching the snowflakes dance with the sea, Bestefar.”

Winking at her return of “grandfather” in their language, he would ask her, “What makes you think they are dancing and not just being blown around by the wind?”

“Because they are in love, Bestefar,” she would answer.

“In love? What do the snowflakes love?” he asked in response.

“Watch them, Bestefar, see the big, pretty ones coming down?” She asked her grandfather, who leaned out, pushing his chin towards the sea, looking as he listened. “Those are the girls. But before they fall to the sea, they hear their suitors calling. Then, fluttering away from giving themselves to the sea, they rush into the circle of the smaller, faster, fleeting snowflakes.”

“Those are the boys then, are they?” he would ask.

“Yes, of course. Those are the boys who want to save their maidens, but the sea is her great love. So when she has finished her waltz with them, she falls to the water. The boys must follow. So it is all love. Love for each other and each to the Sea.

As Tom steered the trawler into the Gulf of Lion, returning them to France, the calm waters kept her memories playing with her mind. Continuing with the innocence of days filled with dancing snowflakes and nights watching the brilliant cavorting of the northern lights, Delia sighed at how she once wished only to dance like those miracles of nature.

It was her grandfather that propelled her into medicine. When he took a stroke, the change in his brain function was so jarring that Delia forgot fanciful dreams of dancing and looked to medicine instead. Her grandfather could no longer speak or write after the stroke, but he could comprehend what was vocalized as well as read. Delia believed she could solve this split in the abilities of the brain.

Delia was not the youngest student to enter the University of Bergen at sixteen. She wasn’t even the youngest woman to do so, but she was the first student ever to hold two doctorates before she turned twenty: the first in Biomedicine, specifically Disease Mechanisms; and the second in the Law of Health and Human Rights. By twenty-two, her work in the biochemistry of gene therapy led to the blueprints for digital convergence and transhumanism. Soon after, her work on pairing that with the morality of human rights was deemed too controversial and more fantasy than science. Her work was denounced, and her research cut off, her reputation destroyed, she was out.

It was a week after being expelled that the Tribe came calling. Now, the work she’d done in the efforts to heal was the very thing she was intent on destroying. It would also be the first time she would set foot back in Norway in almost a decade. With the Rod of Aaron in their possession, they would fracture the frozen pond.

The Octopus group had manipulated every avenue of truth until it was the truth they wanted to be told. Mainstream media had long been in the bag, so it was easy for them to gather governments under the clout of G8 summits. While broadcasting the righteous intentions to the world, the group of eight political and economic leading countries put themselves into an unwinnable situation. That is until the Octopus made them believe that they would all win, equally and with unlimited wealth, power and influence. One by one, the leaders were compromised. Their capitulation ensured each government leader would return home with a structured role to destroy their own country’s freedoms and direct their salvation on a single path. The coup for the Octopus group came with the allegiance of the environmentalists. Halting the Gaia suffocating polluters with the release of a biological weapon fit their mandate perfectly, and acceptable human loss wasn’t given a second thought.

To compromise every one of them equally, guaranteeing a single domino could never collapse the structure the Octopus dealt each of them into a card game. From Princes to Prime Ministers, they manipulated market allocations, elections and directed racketeering, and all the while, Tom led the Tribe working against those mechanisms of control. It was only when the gig was up, when the stew of human trafficking was spoiled, did Tom see the end game. The entity he believed was directed to break it down was just a cook in the kitchen but fully compliant in who was being served.

Getting out and living small was the only way. It was too much power, politics and ego with their influence with money all gathered together in one room, and no one behaved with any moral compass. They had turned their backs on Faith and bathed in sin. But, Tom had conviction, and now he was determined to drown them all with it.

Securing themselves lodging in a low-budget Inn, Delia and Tom would take turns seated at the window next to the door with a silencer capped pistol on the table in front of them. Neither entertained the thoughts of play.

Tom hadn’t moved from the table and kept his back to Delia while she slipped silently from bathroom to bed. Ignoring her nakedness beneath the thin cotton sheet, Tom kept his gaze out the window.

In the morning, they would start their journey to Norway. Then all they had to do for the next twenty-four or so hours was to remain alive over the two-thousand-kilometre drive with every government intelligence agency in the world searching for them.

Tom removed a thick bundle of cash from a small satchel, causing Delia to raise her eyebrows. “Tom! I would never have suspected sheep farming could be so lucrative!” she said.

“It’s sheepherding technically, and there’s plenty of money in it, only none of it is profit,” Tom replied.

“Then you’ve robbed a bank during your travels?” she asked.

Counting out stacks of bills equaling the thousands he’d need to purchase a reliable used car, Tom replied, “Nope. One of my aliases is a terrible day trader, but he cashed in nicely with his stock in Gamestop. Who knew?”

Eight hours later, Tom and Delia steered the Volkswagen Passat off the A4 in France and merged into the A1, leading them towards Düsseldorf, Germany and the scrutiny of the German border officials. Although they had little concern with their border-hopping route with open travel between E.U. countries, both the Shepherd and Marigold knew their entry and passage would be recorded. From this point on, the pair expected surveillance followed by an impending ambush. The two remaining members of the Tribe reappearing on the world stage would need to be handled. The ease with which they passed through the border only heightened their wariness.

At the tip of the Flensburg Fjord in northern Germany, Tom and Delia sat on the curbside patio looking at the brick gabled Nordertor, the last remaining city gate built around 1595. Looking like the weary travellers they were, having driven for sixteen hours straight, the pair enjoyed a late dinner while marking the surveillance team. Consisting of the two dark sedans parked on opposite sides of the street and the silver, windowless van sitting in the dark corner of the parking lot behind them.

Tom was surprised he was still alive. Delia was the asset; he was nothing but a wrench in the machine. If they were able to take Delia and use her, it could expedite the nefarious plans of the Octopus group by months. Outnumbered and exposed, Tom and Delia needed to get through the city gate and into Denmark.

Sliding her hand across the table, Delia tucked her fingers into Tom’s palm, “You can’t hide your mind from me, Tom. We’re going to make it. Together.” She spoke quietly over the finished dinner platter. “I’ll never let them take me alive. You just worry about getting me to the compound.”

“Delia,” replied Tom, calmly holding her gaze while his mind calculated a myriad of options, “if they want you alive, they will take you alive.”

Tom leaned back in his chair, giving the impression of a well-fed and relaxed tourist. “I’m certain that’s why I’m still alive. The C.O. is waiting on approval for his plans to move on us. It’s how they will take you alive that’s the problem. To them, I’m already dead.”

“Tom, we don’t have the firepower, the cover or support against their numbers,” Delia stated.

Smiling broadly while patting his stomach and placing a toothpick into his mouth, Tom leaned forward to his beautiful mate and said, “We use what we have, and they don’t. Faith. Faith will clear our path.”

“Tom?” Delia asked, leaning in towards him, raising the dessert menu in her hand and waving it pleadingly, “Do you even know how to wield it? How does it work?”

Winking, Tom replied, “God only knows, Delia. Have Faith.”

Ten minutes later, Tom was laying on the street with his back against the car, blinking his eyes trying to bring the world back into focus, slowly Tom raised himself to one knee. His left arm felt like it was on fire with electricity. In front of him lay the charred remains of six bodies. Pulling himself to his feet, his eyes swept around. Behind him, two more bodies that were mostly ash and bone wore the deflated dark clothes of his pursuers; three more scorched corpses lay to his left. The rest of the street was abandoned and still. Blinking his eyes, he worked to remember.

He and Delia moved for their car when the men swarmed. Delia bolted, opened the backdoor and jumped in, throwing the staff out behind her to Tom, its sapphire growing with light. Stepping into the street, Tom struck the rod into the pavement with his left hand while making the sign of the cross over his body with the right. Then light exploded everywhere, followed by a crack through the air like a horsewhip snapped only a thousand times louder.

Then nothing.

Opening the car door to where Delia had taken cover, Tom’s heart dropped to see only the empty leather seat staring back.

Delia was gone.

A moment later, Tom realized so was the Rod of Aaron.

Chapter 6 — Conclusion