“After leavin’ you, we went back to Dolores,” Big Terry explained, “was already occupied by the CSA.”
The two hostages were bruised, cut, and burned, but otherwise uninjured. Sachi had made them give up their exoskeletons, giving them a single blanket to share between them, made smaller by strips torn off to bind them. Big Terry had an angry but defeated look in his eyes, having reluctantly agreed to talk without Sachi resorting to enhanced interrogation techniques. Isaac remained obstinate, refusing to speak. Sean had died at the road crossing.
Sachi and Savita stood over the two prisoners. Colonel Riviera was there, I figured, to make sure the questioning didn’t get too intense, since she asked if I would accompany her. Her suspicions were roused when the two forty-eights leaders led the two prisoners off into the woods, away from the makeshift camp – a jumble of bodies huddled together beneath blankets, trying to stay warm.
“And they just let you come in?” Sachi asked.
“When they saw us approachin’, they sent out a unit,” Big Terry said, “we expected it, so we surrendered peacefully. They didn’t have a way’uh containin’ all of us there, so they kept us under armed guard till they got enough transport vehicles up from Cortez. We waited there for ‘bout two-n-a-half hours and then the transports showed up. Only, they came with some cars, too. Was some folks that work for Benecorp.” He glanced at Isaac. “Said ‘is name was Lucas Costa or somethin’, didn’t he?”
Isaac said nothing.
“Lucas Costa,” I said, everyone looking to me, “that’s a Portuguese sounding name. Was he Brazilian?”
“Dunno,” Big Terry said, “some kinda Hispanic.”
Sachi gave me a subtle nod, indicating she understood what I was getting at, but turned her attention back to the prisoners.
“Anyway, he came and started askin’ folks who was in charge,” Terry continued, “the guy came ta me with a proposition – we go after you the way we done until they says so, and we’ll get our freedom. Most my people said no. They didn’t want no part’uh the violence, so they was hauled off in transports. I agreed to go along with it. A few of the Crusaders came with us. They supplied the exos, some food and water. They said ta just keep on ya, but not ta kill ya.”
“Why?” Sachi asked.
Terry shrugged, “wish I could tell ya.”
“Then why did some of your people start firing on the CSA at the road crossing?” I asked.
Terry glanced at Isaac again, but said nothing.
“You’re not telling us everything,” Sachi said.
“I told you more’n enough,” he said.
Sachi looked to Colonel Riviera, who glowered back, knowing what Sachi was thinking. Big Terry and Isaac didn’t seem to pick up on the exchange. Sachi then turned to me, as if requesting that I take Riviera away so she could have her way with the prisoners.
“You think there’s no hope of redemption,” Riviera said, taking a step toward them so that she stood side-by-side with Sachi, “that what you did to all these people can’t be forgiven, so you helped us out.”
“Girl,” Isaac spoke up, raising his gaze to her, “the whole lot of us are sinners. None of us deserve redemption. Least of all the LoC. The new Sodom and Gomorrah, where pleasures of the flesh were allowed to go unchecked. Our once beautiful state is a lamb that has lost its way, and Gabriel Mitchell aims to bring it back into the fold. You yourself have lived as an adulterer for years, and then brought innocence into your-”
Savita backhanded the man, the hard armor of her exo glove smashing across his face. He fell over, grabbing at his face with bound hands, but didn’t utter a peep. Colonel Riviera didn’t protest the action.
“We’ve heard the stories of torture and murder from you forty-eights,” Big Terry said, “I reckon you’ll do nothin’ to dispel those rumors out here.”
“You’re one to judge,” Riviera said, “the Crusaders lead more than one lynch mob for your own brand of justice.”
Terry gave a wry smirk, “we were going after wrongdoers. And we-”
“You’re innocent of wrongdoing?” she asked, “after what you put these refugees through?”
“I throw myself on the mercy of the court,” Terry said, clenching his jaw to show he wasn’t going to talk.
Isaac spit blood out, “God’s judgment will be much harsher than yours.”
Sachi looked to Colonel Riviera again but I spoke up first. “We can give them a few days to think about things. At least as far as Grand Junction.”
Sachi sighed, glancing at Savita, and said “I suppose.”
Terry tried to hide his relief, but Isaac actually looked annoyed by my clemency. The four of us led them back to where everyone else was sleeping, but left them a few feet away from the huddled bodies, giving only each other for warmth. The four of us then joined in the perimeter of the camp, our exoskeletons keeping us warm and helping to block the wind from everyone else.
Sachi looked at me, giving a slight nod. I nodded back, putting the visor down on my exo helmet. We connected in a private channel to talk.
“You think this Lucas Costa guy is Enduracorp and not Benecorp?” Sachi asked, “some kind of spy?”
“I do.”
“What do you think that means?”
“That Enduracorp knows at least one of us is here,” I said, “amongst the refugees.”
“And they want us alive.”
“Yes.”
“Might work in our favor,” Sachi said, “having Brazil protecting us.”
“Maybe,” I said, “no way to know what Enduracorp wants or what they’ll do to get it.”
“No use speculating,” Sachi said, “we might as well try getting some rest.”
“Agreed.”
The night trudged by slowly. Wind howled through the pines and empty deciduous trees like a voice of the damned. Snowflakes came down on us at an angle, piling up on the tops of people’s blankets.
Sleep never really came for me. Every time it approached, I was either startled awake by Evita’s whisper or the shapes from my hallucination forming in my vision. Even with the exoskeleton suit, the cold crept in, made worse by the sheen of anxious sweat covering my body. Children’s sobs or the pained moans of adults could occasionally be heard over the sound of the wind.
When morning finally came, six inches of pure white snow covered the ground. And it was still coming down. The wind blew harder, temperatures slouched lower, and the sky stood dark gray.
The refugees were slow to get moving, expressions locked in bewilderment at their present condition. Only a week before they had been sitting in their comfortable houses drinking coffee and worrying about the day’s tasks. The news of the upcoming storm – the first big precipitation in southern Colorado in almost five years – had meant getting their shovels back out of storage. The companies that owned the roads were promising to keep them clear of snow, that driving them would remain safe.
And now they were in the beginning of that blizzard. Stuck outside, on the run from people who would see them dead. They were shot, blown up, and wounded. Their homes were long gone. Loved ones dead. It was unimaginable. This was the type of thing they only heard about on podcasts. Nothing but an internet meme to scroll past. Something that only happened to people in far off places.
Most of the people in exoskeletons walked in front, cutting paths through the deep snow for everyone else to walk through.
The only one who didn’t seem terribly uncomfortable was Akira. There was almost something enviable about her condition, completely unaware of her own misery. She seemed to retain something about Aveena, who she now followed around without prompt. Aveena occasionally had to stop so she could brush snow and ice away from Akira’s face and hair, all the while taking care of Yukiko, who seemed to have caught on to the fact that her mother wasn’t being herself. Yet I could tell that Aveena was somewhat thankful to have extra tasks to distract her.
Doctor Taylor, Ellen, and Nancy Sterling all seemed just as eage
r to find tasks to occupy them. The three of them made their way about the slowly marching refugees, tending to wounds and supplying painkillers – often in larger doses than was recommended. To do nothing would require that they think about the people they’ve lost.
The two prisoners were being marched in front of us. All the refugees knew that they had been in charge of the rebels who had pursued us for so long, but everyone was too exhausted to feel anything more than mild disdain for them. Yet I could tell Big Terry as being eaten up on the inside by what he had done, which is what I had anticipated would happen. Isaac, on the other hand, was able to shield his guilt behind a wall of self-righteousness.
“I guess I can sometimes forget how much psychological torture can work on people,” Sachi said to me around three in the afternoon, the two of us walking behind everyone else.
“I suppose that’s a result of always being sure of yourself,” I said.
Sachi said nothing for a few paces and then said, “It’s probably a sign that you’re right about me that my first instinct was to argue with you there.” She sighed, “but that’s exactly why I need you with me for this. You’re the one who will tell me when I’m being rash.”
“Isn’t that what Markus is for?” I asked.
“Yes,” Sachi said, “but he’ll die at some point. Then who do I have?”
I said nothing for a few moments, the two of us making our way through the snow. Even behind where everyone else was walking, it was still deep enough I didn’t lift my feet out of it at a normal gait. And yet it continued coming down.
“I’m going to be dying soon,” I finally said.
Sachi nodded slowly, “I know.”
“Do you ever wish you wouldn’t come back?”
She looked to me for a moment before facing forward again. “Of course, that thought goes through my mind sometimes. But to be honest with you, as bad as things can sometimes be, I’m glad I have this…gift.”
“It’s fascinating,” I said, “because I have the normal human drive to stay alive. Even knowing I’ll come back. The thought of dying has a…a visceral sort of terror for me. But when I think about my existence in its entirety…I wish it could end. I don’t even know if I would end it. I just wish I knew that it could.”
“I can understand that,” Sachi said.
“I had a hallucination a while back,” I said, “induced during a procedure to stem my split-brain episodes.”
Sachi looked to me with genuine interest, but said nothing.
“In that hallucination, I saw…things,” I continued, “things I can’t explain. And yet…things I can’t stop seeing every time I close my eyes. Akira found out that I had some kind of special version of that chemical we have. Later on, a similar procedure to scan my brain did not induce the hallucination, and it turned out that the level of that special version of the chemical was greatly diminished, meaning that that version of the chemical had something to do with my hallucination.”
“Where is this coming from?” Sachi asked.
“You probably learned from our leaks,” I said, “that NexBioGen was experimenting with this special version of the chemical, which they were getting from someone being held in the PRA.”
Once again, Sachi stayed quiet, but her expression told me she believed me.
“I’m not sure how this woman, this asset A, has this special version of the chemical,” I said, “but I do know there are two ways that this chemical – in either form, I assume – shows up in someone without it being injected into them. Either by being an immortal, like us, or being in the germ line of an immortal. I haven’t had any children survive in quite a few lifetimes, and we know that Laura is your granddaughter. I’m guessing this person is in the germ line of one of Imelda’s past lives. There seems to be something even more…special, about the chemical in her.” I paused a moment before saying, “do you think there is something special about Imelda that his germ line would have this chemical in them naturally?”
“No.”
I stayed quiet for a while as we walked, listening to our feet crunch in the snow. Finally, I spoke up. “You knew that something like this could happen, didn’t you? That’s the real reason you wanted to keep Laura around.”
“Is this really the time to talk about this?” Sachi asked.
“Like I said, I’m going to be dying soon. Who knows when we’ll find each other again?”
Sachi sighed and stayed quiet for a few steps before saying, “I saw something once before. I didn’t know what it was or what it really meant, only that it was important.” She paused again, considering how to proceed. “I was living in the Helmand Basin. I figure it was sometime around nineteen hundred B.C. by the Christian calender.”
“I already knew by then that there was something wrong with children I had,” she said, “but I was married off as the first wife to a wealthy trader from the Indus Rivery Valley. I gave birth to three children for him. The first two turned out as I expected. Something wrong with them. But the third was…different. He was different in that he was seemingly normal. Though very intelligent. He started teaching himself mathematics at three. He could read Elamite, Turkmeni, and multiple ancient Indian languages by age six. As far as my husband was concerned, this made up for the fact that the first child I gave him, a daughter, was almost catatonic her entire life, and the second child I gave him, a son, was overcome with delusions and paranoia.” She smirked. “The bitch of it, though, is that my third child wasn’t even his. He never found out about that, though.”
“Anyway, my third child went on to study math and philosophy and law,” Sachi continued, keeping her eyes down on the snow in front of her as we walked, “and he excelled at it. In fact, by the time he was old enough that my husband wanted me to find him a wife, all he did was write down equations on whatever he could get his hands on. He refused five suitable women before my husband beat him and forced him to get married.”
She took a deep breath. “But my son…he wouldn’t even touch his wife. He didn’t have any kids of his own. He simply worked on his little ‘theories.’ Things that baffled the other merchants and glergyman. When he was almost forty, he was written off as nothing but a crackpot. I knew there was something important about what he was doing. Eventually he died from dysentery. He lived in his own filth, ignoring everything except for his work…his obsession.”
“But it was when he was on his death bed that I realized just how important his work was,” Sachi said, “he told me he knew about my reincarnation, because he’d figured out something about it in his equations and shit. When he died, I gathered everything he’d done and tried to compile it into something that makes sense.” She shook her head, “I tried to understand it, but it was all way beyond me.”
“What happened to it?”
“I hid it,” she said, “so I could find it again in a later life. A life where I might try to understand it. I had three lives where I went and looked at it, but I never had any luck. So I always put it back, hoping for better luck in the future. Finally, in the thirteenth century, I thought I might have a chance.”
“Thirteenth century…”
“I was with the Mongols,” she said, “they were incorporating scholars and philosophers from dozens of different cultures. And we were going west. Toward Baghdad, where some of the best mathematicians of the time lived. I had it with me until…until I was killed. Somewhere between modern Afghanistan and western Iran. I’ve gone back to the area twice since then, trying to find the work, but it’s been lost ever since.”
“The Mongols,” I said, “I was in Baghdad when they came.”
Sachi’s eyes went wide, “Christ, that must have been brutal.”
“It was just as bad as the first time,” I said, “in Zhongdu.”
Sachi pursed her lips, “back then, it was difficult not to be affected by the conquest. I suppose I got off easy, being one of the Turks riding with Genghis Khan against the Chinese.”
This made me burst out laugh
ing. A few of the refugees glanced over their shoulders at me, but nobody said anything.
“What’s so funny?” Sachi asked.
“You were probably there when I was butchered by the invaders,” I said, still laughing, “in Zhongdu. I should be angry at you right now.”
Sachi started laughing with me. “Do you know how many times you and I might have run into each other in our past lives? Both as friends and foes?”
“If we traced back our timelines, we might find hundreds of things to be mad at each other for,” I laughed.
By this time some people had come back to see what all the commotion was about. Rocky and Emma exchanged confused glances, Yukiko looking at us in surprise from Aveena’s arms, agent Brie glancing at Colonel Riviera and shrugging. Sachi and I continued laughing hysterically, this realization becoming absurdly funny given our current situation.
“You fucking bitch,” I laughed, pointing a finger in mock accusation at Sachi, “you and I are immortal enemies.”
“You call me a bitch one more time, and I’ll kill you again,” she laughed, picking up snow and throwing it at me.
“You killed me, you bitch,” I laughed, “bitch, bitch, bitch!”
I ran and Sachi chased after me. The entire group had stopped now to watch our shenanigans. Sachi caught up to me, tackling me into the snow, my helmet flying out of my hands. Both of us were still howling maniacally, Sachi’s face right near mine, red from laughter. She rolled off of me onto her back in the snow, both of us unable to get up or form any words in our laughter. I tried grabbing my sore sides, but the exoskeleton was in the way. I gasped for breath, still roaring uncontrollably, the hilarity renewed by the baffled expressions of people standing over us. This went on for almost five minutes before Sachi and I were down to giggling, our exo suits becoming covered in snow.
“What the hell’s gotten into you two?” Rocky asked, reaching his hands down to help us up, “and can you spare some for the rest of us?”
“I killed him,” Sachi said, “he went down like a bitch,” he threw some snow on my already sore face, but the pain didn’t matter as our laughter came on again with renewed vigor.
Incarnate- Essence Page 98
