Rogue Read Online Free Page A

contact with our…new friends from down below, on the other side of the divide.”
    “But how?” asked Will as he walked over to join his grandfather. “They were all dead by then, weren’t they, or banished there—”
    “Dead, certainly not, but banished?” Franklin chortled again. “That’s only what those preposterous do-gooders who put them there have convinced themselves to believe.” He looked at Will sharply. “And you do know who I’m referring to, don’t you?”
    Will knew he was on dangerous ground here; he tried to maintain a delicate balance of skepticism and light contempt in his response. “I heard they call themselves the Hierarchy. Are those the ones you mean?”
    “Exactly so.”
    “I didn’t know they were real.”
    “Oh, they’re real, all right, sorry to say, and full of more self-righteous arrogance and delusional grandeur than you could possibly imagine.”
    “Who are they?”
    “Like our friends, older beings. Far older, from some other realm beyond our imagining, or perhaps, as they claim—I’ll reserve my skepticism—advanced souls who’ve evolved beyond the indignities of physical life on Earth into a more exalted existence. And I suppose it is possible that at one time, in distant ages past, they did serve a useful function for this Earth. Who’s to say? Maybe for a period of time they faithfully fulfilled that purpose.
    “But once our friends developed into something like their equals, I believe the Hierarchy’s pride got the better of them. Instead of celebrating them as peers, they perceived the Others as rivals, and from that moment on, these fools forfeited any claim on their former role as “benign protectors.” After that, they engaged in a genocidal crusade to thwart a magnificent race of beings that was guilty of nothing more than realizing its destiny. Which culminated in the Hierarchy’s tragic decision to ‘banish’ the brightest light this world had yet produced.”
    Franklin’s voice trembled with barely suppressed anger and his hands were shaking as he waved them around emphatically. Will had never seen him so wound up.
    “Now you and I, we’re expected to learn from our mistakes, correct? Well, the norms of human behavior don’t apply to our ‘lords and masters.’ That was only the beginning of their missteps, Will. During our own human history, these fools have made countless blunders interfering with the affairs of men, thwarting our progress, holding us back from reaching our highest potential.
    “But the worst mistake the Hierarchy ever made was their first one, and how badly they underestimated the Others they tried to so callously destroy. And soon we will finally make them pay for it.”
    Will’s blood ran cold, but he kept his voice neutral. “I’m not sure I understand. Do you mean your friends aren’t actually trapped in—what do they call that place again?”
    “The Never-Was? Oh, yes. They were trapped in there all right. Banished. Never to be seen again.”
    “So how did they make contact with you?”
    “In dreams, of course,” said Franklin, as if this was the most obvious answer in the world. “To begin with. Both Dr. Abelson and I experienced this, a slow filtering of ideas into our minds. But it took us a while—thick-skulled hominids that we are—to realize these remarkable creatures were reaching out to us through a language of symbols and images, not words—and that eventually led us to what they wanted us to find.”
    “What was that?” asked Will.
    “A more direct way of communicating,” said Franklin, grasping a pull string attached to the curtain. “Through the device they’d left behind so long ago specifically for that purpose. They’d designed it as a kind of beacon, like the black boxes in today’s commercial airplanes. One that emanated a faint signal that could only be perceived by individuals attuned to its peculiar frequency—the one that Ian Cornish had first sensed when he arrived and