Malachai

by Romi Hart

  He let himself inside. Courtney looked up from the living room couch and gasped, but he strolled past her without explaining anything. He descended into a well of silence. Anarock couldn’t help him. He was going somewhere so far away from Anarock it would no longer exist even when he was a few short miles away.

  He went to his own room and took off the t-shirt and fatigues he put on this morning. Then he took the hottest shower of his life. When he got out, he studied himself in the mirror for a long time. He inspected himself with unflinching attention.

  He shaved carefully and did his hair. Then he put on his best suit. He polished his shoes to a mirror shine. He adjusted his cuff links down to the millimeter and positioned his gold watch in exactly the right place on his wrist. He put his keys, phone, and wallet in his pockets.

  He gave himself one last examination in the mirror. Several areas could use improvement, but this was as good as he would get for now. It would have to do.

  He rotated on his heel and walked out of the apartment. He trotted down the stairs and Jules unlocked the gate for him. He walked away without looking back. He put as much distance between himself and Ogru-Kuche as possible.

  The farther he traveled, the more he left Anarock and the New Breed and his old life behind. On the surface, Anarock looked like his real life, but he erased that part of his being from existence. He remade himself into a normal human male. He plunged into the streaming masses of people and became a corpuscle riding on the city’s bloodstream.

  He checked back and forth to make sure no one was watching. Then he hopped a few fences and dashed under the expressway. He darted over to downtown and didn’t stop until he got to Canal Street.

  He slowed his pace and blended in with the crowds. He found a quiet café and took a seat at the bar. He ordered a drink and took out his phone.

  8

  Isabelle pitched her handbag onto her desk, but she didn’t sit down. She paced up and down. Riley’s warning rang in her ears, but she never for a second considered turning her back on this mystery.

  Riley knew exactly what Malachai’s blood results meant. Isabelle never doubted that for a second. Something insidious was going on in that building on Louisiana Avenue. Whatever it was, it had something to do with Malachai.

  Isabelle still clutched the results in her sweaty palm. She couldn’t force her fingers to uncurl from their rumpled sheets. They contained the answers she needed. She just had to figure out how to interpret them.

  Just then, her phone beeped in her handbag. She pulled it out and read the notification. Staff meeting today, 4pm.

  She forgot about the meeting, but it meant nothing to her. She would relate the findings on the SAS guys with the variable fingerprints and the Mexican kid who broke a gator’s neck with his bare hands. She’d seen stranger things in this job.

  She became aware once again of the pages in her hand. This was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. How could she explain these results to a bunch of pathologists?

  She whipped around and stormed out of the lab. She ran up the stairs two at a time until she arrived at the admin level. She barged down the corridor and burst into her boss’s office without knocking.

  Captain Patrick Fahey bent over his desk from a standing position. He lurched upright and his eyes flew open, but Isabelle didn’t hesitate a second. “I need to talk to you, Sir. It’s urgent. I just ran a DNA test on a subject. The results suggest he has reptilian DNA and his physiology is all over the map. I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to say the FISH machine was out of whack, but I ran a calibration and it’s fine. I can’t explain it, but I thought I’d run it by you before the meeting. Take a look.”

  She spread the sheets in front of him before she noticed a different man sitting behind the desk. He was sitting in Captain Fahey’s chair. Isabelle froze when she saw the bars on his lapel.

  Captain Fahey stiffened and his mouth took on a dangerous shape. He waved to the stranger. “This is Admiral Porter from Washington. He’s here conducting our annual review. Admiral, this is our senior research supervisor, Lieutenant Isabelle Lytle.”

  Isabelle cringed. She could only drop her arms to her sides and choke out the words. “Pleased to meet you, Sir.”

  The expression on the Admiral’s face struck real fear into Isabelle’s heart. He climbed to his feet one micron at a time. He cast one meaningless glance at the pages and leveled his ferocious blue eyes at her.

  “I can understand results like this would make you question what’s real. Isn’t that how you feel, Lieutenant?”

  Isabelle quaked in her shoes before his towering presence. She nodded, but her throat wouldn’t obey her. He never looked at the pages again. He didn’t study the results. He didn’t question them at all.

  “You have to understand, Lieutenant. The military operates this lab as a confirmation center for pathology tests carried out all over the world. What passes through this lab gets seen by pathologists in a lot of other centers. We would never trust a single individual to confirm our findings. Do you understand?”

  She nodded like an idiot even though she didn’t really get what he was driving at.

  His voice cut like a knife. Those words sounded like he was trying to comfort her and assure her, but this interview didn’t feel very reassuring or comforting.

  He waved toward the pages without looking at them. “You see, Lieutenant, we make sure our people only see the material their security clearance qualifies them to see. I assume these blood results didn’t come to you through the usual channels with your designated performance-indicated material.”

  Her blood ran cold. How could he know that after barely glancing at the results? How could he know what was in them when he didn’t read them?

  “You function as part of a larger whole, Lieutenant. The chain of command exists to ensure that the appropriate officers decide how the country responds to the various threats imposing on it. Those most qualified to do so will decide what we do with these results if anything. Do I make myself abundantly clear, Lieutenant?”

  She blinked up at him. He didn’t come right out and say so, but he basically told her to stay in her little pigeonhole and mind her Ps and Qs. He spoke about the results as though he knew exactly what was in them. He could only do that if he did know exactly what was in them.

  She looked up at Captain Fahey and read the same stony, patronizing disdain in his features. She glanced back and forth between them. The longer she spent in this office, the more certain she became that they knew all about these results. They might not know about Malachai Griffin, but the results didn’t surprise them. At least, the results wouldn’t surprise them if they ever bothered to read them.

  She stumbled out of the office and staggered back to the lab before she realized she left the printout on Captain Fahey’s desk. She kicked herself, but in the end, what could she really do? The Admiral told her to her face to mind her own fucking business.

  She wouldn’t be able to use lab resources to pursue the Malachai mystery. Her superiors would be watching her from now on. If she stepped out of line to investigate something beyond her stupid fucking performance-indicated material, they would come down on her like a ton of bricks.

  That was what the Admiral really meant. If she found out something the military didn’t want her to find out, she would be threatening her job. They would throw her out on her ear.

  She should have expected that. After all, she took an illegal DNA sample from a US citizen. She conducted what amounted to a criminal invasion of his privacy and accessed classified records without authorization. She did all that outside the boundaries of her job as a public servant. She was lucky they didn’t prosecute her. That was what Riley had been trying to tell her and she was too damned dense to listen to the woman who was supposed to be her best friend.

  She snatched her handbag in a flurry of confusion. She didn’t think. She bolted for the exit in the middle of the workday. She pounded up the stairs and burst into
the parking lot, but she didn’t look for her car. She took off at a fast trot across the street and buried herself in New Orleans.

  Now what was she going to do? She searched every building on her way back to Canal Street. Every face appeared before her eyes like a phantom out to accuse her or attack her. When did she get so paranoid about everything? She didn’t do anything—not really.

  Why did she head toward Canal Street? What could that place hope to tell her that she didn’t already know?

  She strode as fast as she could hunting everywhere for…. something. She couldn’t define exactly what she needed or wanted. She cast her mind ahead of her. Malachai was out there somewhere. He held his secret close to his vest. He would never share it with her. She could be certain of that. Why on Earth should he confide in her? Riley didn’t confide in her and Riley was supposed to be her friend, her best friend.

  Isabelle didn’t even know Riley anymore. Riley gave up the Navy, her career as a pilot—everything—and for what? For a man she hardly knew? She threw her destiny and her future in with some shadow existence in the most rotten, stinking, filth-ridden ghetto in New Orleans.

  Was Riley hooked on drugs? Was she in a cult or something? What could convince a motivated, powerful, successful pilot to throw away everything to live in squalor? That building in Central City spelled disaster. Anybody could see that just by looking at it. Its crumbling walls and trash-strewn yard speckled with half-dead bodies—the very memory made Isabelle shudder.

  If that was what Riley was involved in, Isabelle wanted nothing to do with any of that. Not even Malachai could induce her to get mixed up in something so insidious and horrible.

  Isabelle experienced a pang of regret over Malachai. Sure, he was hot and everything. He was clean-cut and polite and magnetic and obviously successful, too. So what was he doing in that building along with Riley?

  Isabelle hadn’t seen Riley’s husband, but he must be something like Malachai. Whatever was going on in that building, it attracted some very compelling people. How could it be all bad?

  She turned onto Canal Street, but it struck her as eerie and unfriendly now. She didn’t want to hang around here. She took off into the French Quarter. She spent hours wandering through the historic buildings seeing nothing. The mystery kept spinning around and around her head with no resolution.

  She would wear herself out this way. Devastating exhaustion dragged her down. She needed to get off her feet and rest, but where? She drew to a halt in front of one of the old French residences dripping with ivy and ghostly significance. Not even these haunted old houses held the same fascination for her that the rundown building did. Its very ugliness and ruin breathed with so much more depth and meaning than she could ever imagine.

  Something made her glance over her shoulder. When she did, she noticed sunbeams shafting through the houses at an almost horizontal angle. How did she waste the whole day walking around out here? Captain Fahey would have her ass on a platter for missing that staff meeting. Then again, maybe he would put two and two together after the Admiral reprimanded her like that.

  She spun around and made her way back south. She would pick up her car from the lab parking lot and go home. That was where she really belonged, even if she didn’t hold out much hope for getting any sleep tonight.

  She made it five blocks before she remembered something curious. She stopped short and pulled out her phone. Yes, there was Riley’s phone number entered in her contacts. Why didn’t she just call or text Riley and ask her point-blank what was going on? Maybe Riley wouldn’t tell her everything, but at least Isabelle could call on someone who understood if she really needed to.

  Someone in this crazy world grasped the full nature of the mystery. That singular fact on its own gave her comfort. The labyrinth wasn’t completely intractable. Somewhere in this weird old world, those results made sense. Someone could explain it if they chose to. They simply didn’t choose to explain it to Isabelle.

  She stared down at Riley’s number. It was a landline. That fact added a note of strangeness to the matter, but Isabelle let it go. She put the question away along with her phone. She couldn’t banish it from her mind, but she could set it aside, for now at least.

  She didn’t look around at buildings or faces on the way back. She set her sights straight ahead and didn’t look right or left. She zeroed in on the lab to the exclusion of all else. She rehearsed unlocking her car door, getting behind the wheel, switching over the ignition, putting the vehicle in gear, backing out of the space, turning onto the street, and every detail of the route home. She traced herself walking up the stairs to her apartment, unlocking the door and bolting it behind herself, setting her handbag and keys on the side table, kicking her shoes underneath it…..

  She angled into the parking lot. She opened her mouth to say goodnight to the security guard, Tommy, but when she glanced into the guard’s kiosk, he wasn’t on his stool behind the desk. That was odd.

  She made her way between rows of cars. She spotted her own Toyota Camry in the distance. The sinking sun cast it in shadow along with all the other windshields lined up like candies in a box.

  She took hold of her handbag to get out her keys when something crashed behind her. She jerked around, but she didn’t see anything. A chill ran up her spine when she realized she was completely alone out here.

  For a fraction of a second, the world slowed to a standstill. Why were there so many cars in the parking lot at this time of the evening? It should have been dead deserted and Tommy should be making his rounds to make sure the parking lot was completely secure.

  He locked the gates at six-thirty every evening. Her phone said it was quarter to eight right now but the gate stood open for any Joe to stroll in and start vandalizing the employees’ cars. Where was Tommy? He never left his desk except to do his rounds.

  She shivered and spun around to hurry to her car. She fumbled her keys out of their pocket and put her thumb on the lock release. She had to make sure the door was open when she got there.

  She slotted between the cars moving faster when she heard it: footsteps. They didn’t hurry. They clipped across the pavement with a purposeful rhythm. How could anyone be that purposeful in a world packed with mysteries?

  She didn’t stop this time. When she looked back a second time, she didn’t see anybody in the parking lot. Someone was there, though. She heard their feet and she sensed their presence as surely as if they were standing right next to her. She could hear their breath and smell their scent.

  She bumped into a random car. She bounced off it and whipped around. In a fraction of a second, she collided with a man who wasn’t there a second before. He materialized out of thin air right in her path.

  She ricocheted off his solid frame screaming more in surprise than fright. She whirled to one side to make a break for her car, but someone else appeared in her path. All at once, seven men surrounded her. They converged on her everywhere she turned.

  Her heart leaped into her mouth. She couldn’t scream. From a place apart from herself, she told herself to flip her keys around and use them as a weapon. Before she could move, they closed. They grabbed her in a net of arms.

  Someone picked her up. Her feet left the ground. The pavement separated from her heels and she burst into a flurry of struggling. She kicked and stabbed her keys everywhere. “Let me go! You bastards! Get off me! You can’t do this to me!”

  Her voice echoed off the building—the building in which she worked for the last five years. It didn’t answer except with her own screams. No one came to her rescue. Why? Her voice sounded so small and insignificant and lost in that vacuous hole of existence.

  The men grabbed her ankles and restrained her. They ripped the keys out of her hands. One guy caught hold of her right wrist and another seized her left. They worked together dragging her to the ground.

  Her backside bumped the asphalt. They pried her spread-eagled and wrenched her limbs apart. No matter how she kicked and flailed, they overp
owered her. Their features locked in brutal, inhuman disregard for everything she did. Her voice didn’t penetrate them. She didn’t exist to them. They might not even be human at all. They looked directly into her eyes without the slightest hint of feeling.

  Four of them pinned her down. Another knelt on her stomach. She couldn’t breathe to scream. She could only stare up at another one nailing his knee into her sternum. She didn’t have time to wonder what they were going to do to her before he pulled out a glinting Bowie knife.

  He loomed over her taller than the tallest mountain. His being overshadowed everything she was. He wedged his left hand against her jaw and laid that frigid blade across her throat. The blade cut into her skin, but she was already gone. Nothing could stop them from killing her.

  She blinked up at his deathly visage. He looked right at her and he didn’t flinch. He didn’t hesitate to look her in the eye when he killed her. She was nothing to him. She was a piece of livestock for the slaughter.

  She froze in bottomless dread. They were going to kill her. They would leave her bloody and destroyed on the ground like some piece of trash. That was all her life was worth. That was the solution to her mystery.

  Christ, what the fuck was she doing out here in the first place? She should have gone to that staff meeting. She should have turned her back on the whole puzzle and left it to the military brass rather than sacrifice her life over it.

  The guy gritted his teeth. His bicep tightened. A shimmer of straining muscle flashed across his chest under his shirt when he got ready to swipe that knife across her throat. This was it. She was about to die.

  At that instant, something sailed across her line of sight. It happened so fast that, in a second, she was looking up at the sky. It looked a darker blue falling into night. She couldn’t see anything else.

  The next minute, the hands holding her released. It took her a single blink of an eye to realize nothing was locking her down anymore. She flew off the pavement faster than thought and spotted all her attackers converging on…..