by J. L. Wood
“I’ve never taken blood before,” Chris replied.
Sherrie pointed to one of her veins. “Just stick the needle here at an angle. Slowly.” Chris put the needle in her vein, and then Sherrie handed him a vial. “Now, hold the needle tightly and stick the vial in. But don’t press too hard; you just want to get the vial in the needle.” Chris followed her instructions, and when the vial was nearly full, he looked up at her. “Remove it and replace it with the second one,” she instructed.
Chris carefully set the full vial on the table and then inserted the second one. When it was full as well, he pulled it out, and Sherrie pulled out the needle. “Good work,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”
After taking Chris’s blood sample, Sherrie created slides of all three samples and viewed them on the microscope. “Ohhhkay,” she whispered with a smile.
“What are you seeing?” Chris asked, looking over Sherrie’s shoulder.
Sherrie readjusted the lens on the microscope. “Your blood is clear, as expected. The child’s sample, as well as my own, is infested with these tiny critters. But what I don’t understand is why the CDC would not tell us this information. They restricted us from working from any of the samples and even released the information we heard on the radio about it being a bacteria. I don’t get it.”
Chris returned to his stool. “Maybe they just weren’t ready? They didn’t want the information to get out until they could control it? I mean, I’m pretty confused about all of this. Is the surgery you gave Ariel still the solution?”
Sherrie shook her head. “We would have to look into it further, but at this point, with what I know, I would say an immunosuppressant would raise the survival rate. The surgery is a last-ditch effort. If we start with the suppressants, the children may never get to that stage.”
Chris picked up the clipboard of the children’s charts on his floor. “We should test that theory, then. Maybe it’s not too late.”
Sherrie pulled her extra blood sample, along with the sample from the critter. “We should. Have you seen a nurse named Nancy? She runs this floor. We need an extra set of hands.”
Chris looked away. “Um…I know a Nancy from this floor. Maybe the same one? But no, I haven’t seen her.”
“Well, darn,” Sherrie replied, staring into the microscope of the sample from the critter. “Can you grab Jeremy, then? I need his help with this next bit.”
*
Jeremy placed the stethoscope on Sherrie’s forearm and listened for a moment before releasing the blood pressure cuff. “I…I don’t know what to say. You are as healthy as a horse. You passed your health check. Your blood sample is clear. There’s no sign of cancer. I, um…I don’t understand.”
Sherrie smiled and stood up. “I believe L8 cures the sick. However, in a healthy person, their immune system fights it, and the L8 fights back until they both die. It’s a theory. And maybe some healthy kids are just weakened enough to a point that the L8 and their white blood cells live in some sort of equilibrium. Some of the kids at the school got well, and only one had a poor medical history. I think that they just need to get to that point sooner. We should trial immunosuppressants.”
Jeremy shook his head. “That’s too dangerous. This is just an idea—we can’t just trial it on a whim. It’s not ethical. We need to look more into your healing. This sickness cures stage-four cancer. That’s life-changing. This is something that we can study and control.”
“No,” Sherrie said. “We are running out of time. The majority of those kids will die within days. We need to try this, or we will regret it.” She pulled Jeremy to the microscope. “These were inside of me. This is L8. It is wildly apparent in the blood samples that the CDC refused to let us check for ourselves. They know about this, and they still have no solution, or they don’t want a solution. Trust me. We need to do this.”
The room was still until Jeremy broke the silence. “I’m in,” he said, looking into the microscope again. “I could lose my license for this, but I will do anything to save the kids. I trust you…”
Sherrie wrapped her arms around Jeremy and hugged him tight. “Wonderful,” she said. “Just let me know who we should test this on first.”
Jeremy thought for a moment. “Start with the kid that infected you.” He stared at Chris. “Goddammit, Chris. Where’s your getup?”
Chris looked around the room. “It was hot. Where’s yours?”
“Touché. At least pull your mask up and take Sherrie to the boy.”
Chris pulled his mask over his nose and mouth and tightened the straps in the back. “Ready?” he asked Sherrie.
“Almost,” she said, picking up a few fresh syringes. She then rummaged through one of the small medicine cabinets and pulled out a few vials of immunosuppressants. “Okay, let’s go.”
The patients recoiled as Sherrie walked down the halls, fearful of the sickness. She waved at them, which terrified them even more. “It’s okay,” she said behind her mask, trying to ease the tension.
Chris led the way to the isolation room. Once there, he pulled out an extra mask and gear for Sherrie, but she shook her head. “He already got me,” she said with a laugh. “And all of that other stuff is unnecessary. We know it’s airborne.”
“Oh, right,” he replied nervously while slowly opening the door. The boy lay still in the bed, his chest barely moving from shallow breaths.
Sherrie sat on the edge of the bed and rested her hand on the boy’s leg. “Why did you choose me?” she whispered. “Are there other adults like me?”
The boy opened his eyes and stared forward. “The…Ambassador wants to save more. He needs your help. To keep…to keep us safe.”
“Safe from what?” Sherrie asked. She shook the small boy’s leg, but he returned to a deep sleep. When she looked up, she noticed his IV bag filling with a brown fluid.
“That happened earlier!” Chris yelled, alarmed. “Is it trying to escape?”
Sherrie filled the syringe with the immunosuppressants and injected it into the boy’s IV. “I don’t know. Give me a minute.”
She placed the stethoscope to the boy’s chest but then quickly released it. The boy squirmed in the bed and began to mutter something inaudible, and Sherrie leaned in as she tried to interpret what he was saying. She felt a pain in the base of her skull, dull and overpowering. Her vision began to fade to black, and she grabbed at the air in front of her, trying to find something to hold on to, but she was blinded by the darkness. She fell to her knees, the pain and darkness too much to bear.
And then she saw him, the Ambassador from her dreams.
“He’s calling for us,” Sherrie whispered.
Chris ran to Sherrie and dropped to the floor. He propped her head on his knee and held her face. “Who’s calling? Who’s the Ambassador?” he asked, his voice panicked and shaking.
Sherrie frowned and began to whimper. Visions of children all over the world dying filled her head. She felt a sharp pain in her chest and grasped at her heart. “We were too late,” she cried as she began to lose consciousness. “I’ve lost them all.”
– 30 –
The Akabko
The cavern was silent and dark. Don readjusted himself on the clay raft that effortlessly floated over a small body of salt water in the center of the cavern. Splashes of water soaked through the hemp veil that draped his body. The storylines appeared to him, and he sighed. He ripped the veil from his face and stared at the stars through a ragged opening in the cavern ceiling.
“I need more time,” he said.
Akrid’s dikap lit up the cavern. “That is over. The ill fell when ceremony started. Continue.”
Don closed his eyes. He could feel a lump in his throat, and his body began to heat up under his travel suit. The storylines didn’t change, even after finding her, the woman he hoped would stop the deaths. He hadn’t changed enough storylines to get the cure out. He hadn’t done enough to delay the call. He was weak, not even a tenth as mentally strong as the Akabko,
although he harbored their dikap. He needed to develop to truly harness their power. But developing would leave him forever changed, and it scared him. Being Donald Wolf was what he knew, and he wanted to remain that way.
“Small changes, young one. Not big enough.”
“Stay out of my head,” Don said, his voice cracking. He replaced the veil over his face and stared into the stars through the small gaps of the fabric. There was a heaviness on his chest, and he let out a slow breath. He needed to keep it together.
“We unite with dikap. You accepted. Continue. You have three hundred ticks.”
“Minutes. I have five minutes. I can’t count time in seconds.”
Akrid summoned his dikap, returning the cavern to darkness. “Ticks. Judge storylines by ticks. Summon by ticks.”
Don closed his eyes and relaxed his shoulders, letting his body become lifeless, merging with the raft. He laid his hands flat to his sides and let his mouth rest, slightly open, his mind becoming blank, and imagined his body lifting toward the starry cavern center. The dikap stirred inside him, connecting him with the infected on Earth.
As his mind drifted through space, his human body was an empty hull, watching storylines of those with the L8 play out before him. Those who refused to give up. Those who already had. Those on standby. He forced himself into his own vision, his mind leaving the cavern and traveling toward his own creation. He watched as a form of himself crashed onto a black desert, the hemp veil draped over his lifeless form. As he inhaled the smell of fresh air, past memories stung him, the thought of laying his deceased mother to rest at sea. Throwing rose petals at her pink biodegradable urn from the small boat as the water swallowed her whole.
Behind the cloth, the world began to flicker, reminding Don to relax, to forget the past and focus on the now and what would be. In transcendence, feeling was overwhelming, and feeling was dangerous. The flickering subsided, leaving him completely in his creation. Laying his head back into the sand, he slowly removed the cloth and sat up. It was time.
He stood upright and looked around, unsure of what to do. “Children?” he whispered. “I’m waiting for you.” He paused. “And the adult.”
Don closed his eyes and imagined a tide slowly coming in. When he opened them, the sand underneath his feet was damp and cool from the ocean’s water, and a large black body slowly poured in and retreated. The dark-purple sky shone upon the sand, the familiar view from his new home. Those same stars he stared at to fall asleep, still too immature to create his own real worlds.
Don stood puzzled in his empty world. No one came. No one accepted the call.
“The dikap,” Akrid whispered from the cavern. “Through the dikap, their minds will come.”
“Spy,” Don whispered. He held his hands toward the sky. “I’m calling the dikap from the children…and the one adult.” He shook his head. Too theatrical, he thought. What am I even doing? “The dikap will project the kids and the adult into my world.”
“Not language,” Akrid said. “Feel it. Possess.”
Don rolled his eyes. “And you’re telling me this now? I don’t feel shit.”
“Two hundred and fifty ticks.”
Don dropped to the ground, his knees sinking into the wet sand, and burrowed his hands until they were covered, becoming one with his surroundings. He slowed his breathing and closed his eyes to view into their world. A bystander in all of their lives at once. The silent shadow that moved, raising suspicions of ghosts that led to campfire stories. He saw a girl lying on a couch in front of a television. A boy in a secluded hospital bed. A child abandoned in an empty, filthy room.
His body became weightless, and he could now feel the dikap stirring vigorously inside of him back at the cavern. It was an overwhelming sensation, being in two places at once. I want to see them, he thought. Project them to my world. One by one, visions of the strong appeared before him, standing motionless in the black sand. Frozen and semiconscious.
Don stared at the blank faces of the people of Earth who harbored the dikap. Although their projections were with him, their bodies remained home, frozen in their called state. He knew he only had a few minutes before they would be ripped from him, returning him to the cavern.
“When you welcomed the dikap, you heard my voice, the voice of the Ambassador. I told you that you were safe, and you are. As you are here…” He paused. “Virtually? Venus is exploding. The creatures inside of you are the dikap. They will protect our world.”
He looked at the group of projections, but they were still motionless, unfazed. Akrid, help me show them, he thought.
Don’s world faded to Earth. He looked toward the sky. Large asteroids struck a pink barrier around the Earth, letting sprays of dust and debris fall onto the planet, suffocating the vegetation beneath it. The only woman in the group gasped, and the vision eroded back to the sandy beach.
Don approached the woman and laid a hand on her shoulder. “This is your guide,” he said to the children. “She will watch over you.” He then walked through the crowd and gently touched eight of them. “If I touched you, you are one of the eight Chosen, one for each pillar to protect Earth. You must protect your nearest pillar. There will be people who want to destroy them or take them, but you cannot let that happen. To those who have not been touched, you must protect the Chosen. The Fall is near, and you must seek shelter and hold firm until the pillars are in place. You are strong now. I will call on you again. Return home.”
The children’s projections slowly faded into the stars while the guide remained still. Don looked at the body of water.
“You killed the healthy children with your call,” the guide said. “I was almost there. I almost saved them.”
Don frowned and continued to stare into the water. Huge waves began to form, mimicking his sadness. “I was too late,” he whispered. “I am still learning.”
“Was it worth it?” she asked, her voice harsh and unsympathetic.
Don looked up at the guide. “I chose you so that the children will live. You can see the storylines along with me. Through the dikap, we are all one. Use it and spread the cure to the unaffected so that they will not suffer like the ones before.”
The guide shook her head. “You’re spreading the L8 more? Why do the children even have it? The dikap are saving our world.”
“They will save our world from the outside, and we will use them to save our world within. They will unite us all. We are creating a new world.”
“Ten clicks,” Akrid whispered.
Don flinched, and his world changed to the cavern.
“What is that?” Sherrie cried, pointing at Kezmir and Akrid.
Don changed the world back to the sandy beach, but it continued to flicker to the cavern. “The Fall is near,” he yelled. “Read through the storylines!”
Sherrie’s eyes widened as she was pulled from Don’s vision. “Wait!” she screamed. “Is this real?”
Akrid pulled Don from his world. “She was not to see cavern. Those are Akabko storylines. Akabko hive.”
Don sat up on the raft and shook his head. “I didn’t mean to. I couldn’t control it.”
“Impulsive,” Akrid hissed. “The Akabko could face such danger.”
Don looked at Akrid. He could see the effect of the transcendence upon him, a momentary return to feeling. With development came seclusion, a void of feeling. It was the curse of the Akabko; they could not feel. Feeling led to mistakes when all of life’s storylines were laid before them. They could not attach themselves. They had to remain objective in their decisions.
Transcendence through the ceremony was dangerous. It let the Akabko feel. It let him feel even greater. It was a rite of passage to them, the first step to becoming truly Akabko, losing oneself to join a collective. Distancing oneself from personal ambitions to serve the whole. Only the strongest of the Akabko could return to the ceremony. It pushed their minds further than they could alone. It opened them to everything, even the smallest of storylines.
The ceremony was the only way Don could create a world. He was new and weak. Nearly a newborn to the Akabko. And with Akrid’s outburst, he knew even he was not powerful enough to control himself after transcendence. It led him to wonder: If not him, then who?
Kezmir gently slipped into the water, the surface barely moving except for a few escaped ripples that slightly kissed the side of the raft. As Kezmir pulled the raft behind him to the edge of the water, Don watched as the small opening to the stars slowly disappeared. The ritual tired him, and many restless nights awaited him after the Fall. He began to feel a lightness inside, as if a burden had been removed. The power of the transcendence was fading.
As the raft reached the edge, it pushed a small splash of water over the clay enclosure that dripped to the sand below. Don ran his fingers over the wet clay, feeling the etchings engraved, although he could not see what they were. He had the power to if he wanted, but he did not. He handed the ceremonial cloth to Akrid, who gently folded it, making sure the edges were properly aligned and no wrinkles ruined its perfection.
A small gust of wind encircled Don’s body, yet he felt nothing. He was nothing, and he was everything. He was losing himself fast. This was his sacrifice. The distance, the pain, the darkness. As with all things, it would eventually subside. If he chose to develop, the wick in him would run low over time, and then he would be forever numb, like his newfound companions. The last of his humanity blown out, the strength in him bearing the presence of the dikap, as it should be. The Ambassador would take his place with the others in his new forever home.
“This is not who I want to become,” Don whispered.
“You must,” Akrid said, his voice now unmoved, empty.
Kezmir reached for Don. “You are Ambassador of humankind. To change large storyline, you must develop.”
The soft-pink glow of Akrid’s dikap floated through the air, illuminating small sections of the cavern, enough to find one’s way but still be kept in the dark. As the little critters swarmed about, Don’s eyes followed past paintings applied to the cavern walls, paintings that he could not discern. The little urchins he once found terrifying were now a part of him, as it was a part of Akrid and any other being on the planet.
