A Question of Will - The Aliomenti Saga Book 1 Page 0,3

police, stationed inside the massive Dome covering the nearby corporate city of Pleasanton, Ohio, of the potential trespassers. Located on the opposite side of the driveway and concrete gate from the Guard Station, the Tower enabled a guard, located forty feet off the ground, to survey the surrounding territory and perform visual scans of the neighborhood. In the nearly impossible event that someone would breach the walls, the roles would be reversed. Deron would track the perpetrators, and Mark would notify the police.

They’d never had to execute that procedure. No one had ever bothered to try scaling these walls. Several people would try to break in by ramming the gate each year, which generally resulted in a totaled vehicle and, if the foolish driver was lucky, nothing more than whiplash for injuries.

These men clearly desired entry, and his gut told him it wasn’t a case of a resident forgetting to phone in the access authorization. The guidelines required him to proceed as if such a mistake had occurred until evidence proved otherwise. He left the speaker on, maintaining contact with Deron, and moved to the window the men had passed. Pressing a button, he activated a speaker on the exterior of the building. “Excuse me, gentlemen. Access to this community is available only to those authorized by current residents, and at present we have no standing authorizations for today. Please step away from the door, and contact the resident you wish to visit to initiate your access requests.”

The men ignored him. Not one of them even turned to acknowledge hearing his statement.

Mark sighed. The arrogant guests of one of the wealthy residents of this fortress, no doubt too deluded with self-importance to worry about such trivial matters. He knew the type. These men would expect him to eventually give in and allow them entry. Mark recalled an approved dinner guest of Myra VanderPoole several years prior. The man, who was severely obese, had entered the first door of the man-trap, and could not close the door behind him. That left the circuit open, and the system was, in such a circumstance, coded to assume a second person was attempting entry at the same time. The man had demanded that they open the doors, and threatened to sue if Mark did not come to manually open the inner door. Mark refused. Myra VanderPoole had come to the front gate herself and they had agreed to open the concrete gate so that the man could walk in. The man had complained loudly about the horrific treatment he’d received at Mark’s hands. Myra had apparently set her guest straight on that matter, for he’d apologized for his behavior with great fervor later upon his exit from the community.

Mark began to repeat his statement to the men, but paused. He’d heard something odd from the open communication link with Deron. It had almost sounded like a gasp, an inhalation of breath so sudden that it sounded like a noise of terror. He walked back to the control panel in order to listen more closely. “Deron? Everything all right up there?”

There was no reply. Mark was suddenly overwhelmed by a powerful sensation of pure evil, an effect so strong that he nearly lost his footing. “Deron—?”

A thunderous crash sounded from outside, resembling the noise of shattering glass. Mark whirled back toward the driveway, and saw what looked like small pieces of ice fall briefly from the sky. He’d just had time to register this oddity when a second, far louder crash sounded above and behind him. Mark whirled toward the center of the Station and looked up, just as a hole exploded in the ceiling and a large mass fell through. The mass landed in a heap on the floor.

Still feeling the overwhelming sensation of evil, Mark took one step toward the mass of debris, and then stopped, reeling in horror.

The mass that had crashed through the ceiling was Deron. The man looked to be dead. His throat had been slashed away with vicious power, the wound so gaping that the man had already bled out. Deron’s eyes were wide and lifeless, his mouth open as if to protest this cruelty. He lay on top of a pile of wood and shingles from the roof and ceiling that he’d crashed through, pieces of timber impaling him, his arms and legs bent at impossible angles.

Mark was numb with shock. He turned back to his control panel, prepared to phone the police and ambulance, when the sensation