Project Death: Resurrection

by Danielle Thamasa

  #

  A short while later I gave up on trying to sleep and instead just lay on the couch staring up at the ceiling, which was painted off white and was frankly quite dull, but it coordinated well with the mint green walls. Somehow even after beating the Angel of Death I couldn't get him out of my thoughts. The past few hours had been hectic, and the past five years he had been lingering in my thoughts and popping up at random moments, typically when I thought of my differences, which was quite often. Why couldn't I stop thinking about it?

  I could still remember my debriefing with the Leaders after that heal. They said nothing out of the ordinary, or at least, that's what Alaula and Sitara told me later when I told them about the meeting. Well, I hadn't told them everything about the meeting, because there was one thing that I just couldn't say to them. That extra training I had been given was something the Leaders had never done for anyone, not the advanced stuff anyway. They had kept plenty of Resurrectors behind because they weren't keeping up with their classes. My training was different; they told me that I was able to do things that others couldn't.

  Sometimes a charge would have a heart problem and a Resurrector would heal it but the heal wasn't complete; there was always some residual damage left over. It was simply how things worked. Once damaged something couldn’t be made new again and a small flaw could be seen if you knew where to look. I didn't understand all the details but apparently I did not have that restriction and my healing was a complete one that left the person the healthiest they had been in their lives.

  That man would have needed healing every couple of years had any other Resurrector gone to him instead of me.

  Even if I couldn't get that heal out of my mind, it wasn't what bothered me. Those men afterwards, the ones in black. No one else had seemed to notice them at all. The one I ran into had said that I didn't know what I had done. He had to have said that for a reason, though none of the Leaders ever explained it to me.

  Then that other man. I couldn't get his eyes out of my mind. They were so hypnotic that I got the feeling I could stare into them for hours without even caring about what was going on around me. I had not seen either of the men since that day, except in my thoughts and dreams, but it was still enough to affect me. It was even worse now, knowing that the one I had bumped into was the Angel of Death. I had encountered him twice and escaped unscathed. Something had to be going on though I definitely didn’t know what that was.

  The door flew open and Alaula ran into the room. Her hair was a mess with leaves and twigs stuck there, her clothes were stained with dirt and most likely blood, her eyes were wide with fear and shock, and her face was pale. After seeing Sitara in a similar shape earlier this was almost too much. I had never seen the people I cared about looking so unsettled.

  "What's wrong Alaula? Has something happened?" I asked, sitting up slowly. As I did so I almost felt everything around me spin and blur. I blinked a few times and tried to steady myself. Now was not a time for me to fall apart.

  She took a few steps towards us and started to collapse. Being the closest to her and currently the most alert of our group, Damir rushed over and caught her, giving support as he led Alaula to the couch. She sank down into it and her head fell into her hands. Whatever was bothering her had to be really serious if she wouldn’t even meet our gaze. "It's Bem," she said softly. "He's dead."

  Sitara's eyes widened and she lay back against the couch, vacantly staring straight ahead. Damir just stared at Alaula, his face as pale as if he had been locked in a dark room for years. I could see his blue eyes filling with tears, though none fell. This was something I didn’t know how to handle. What could I say or do to make things better? Everything I could possibly think of seemed ridiculous or even a little selfish.

  Bem was one of us, a Resurrector. Needless to say, hearing of his death was a shock, as it just wasn't something that happened. Resurrectors didn't die; we were there to prevent death. And when we felt it was our time to let the younger Resurrectors take over, we moved on to the next stage of our "lives," to Heaven or wherever it was we went next. Certain powerful or influential Resurrectors became Leaders or teachers. It was also common to have a child or two before moving on.

  So here it was that my closest friends were complete messes, we had lost far too many charges and now a fellow Resurrector, and we had no idea what was going on. Even despite all of this I can't help but think that this is a change we can do nothing to stop. All we can hope for is that we’ll adjust quickly and cope with whatever this will do to our jobs and our lives. This is not something I can say just yet. It is clear this emotional wound is still too fresh, so I just sit in silence.

  Damir gazed at Alaula, clearly worried about her. Damir was like that, always one to want to help people and fix things. Years ago I made him stop trying to defend me to all the other Resurrectors because I could see how much it really affected him. Their words meant nothing to me now; I was used to hearing them. "How? When?"

  She lifted her head and looked at each of us for a few moments before she said anything. "The Leaders haven't said much but Bem had been missing for almost a week. Something is going on around here and I don't like it. There's something the Leaders aren't telling us."

  "That's because they don't want anyone to know," answered a voice from the door. I looked over and saw Kiran at the doorway. He walked in, closing and locking the door behind him. As he came over and collapsed in the chair, I saw that he had been crying though it seemed the tears had run out long ago. His tears couldn’t have come from the news about Bem. The news had traveled so quickly. No, there was something else going on.

  I had never seen Kiran look this way before. He had always pushed himself to do his very best at all times and he felt bad if he thought that he wasn't giving 110% but the way he looked now was a thousand times worse than any of the times he thought of himself as a failure. It seemed natural that he had come to find us. Kiran, Damir, Sitara, Alaula, and I were a fairly tight-knit group of friends. We regularly ate meals together and though it was more common for Sitara, Alaula and I to go to the mall together, the boys would join us on occasion. The boys were dependable and quite protective of us. Of course now it looked like they were the ones who needed to be protected and supported.

  "What do you mean?" Sitara asked, breaking the silence that had seemed to completely overtake the room.

  "The Leaders don't want any of us to know what's going on and just how little control we have now," Kiran replied. "Bem wasn't the first Resurrector to be killed nor will he be the last." At this he paused and took a breath to steady himself. "Alena's body was brought in yesterday."

  Alaula and Sitara both gasped at the same time. Alena was Kiran's older sister, a very talented Resurrector. I remembered her assisting in a few of my classes. She was great and there were many who thought she had the potential to become a Leader once her time as an active Resurrector was over. Nothing was certain anymore. In all our training no one ever mentioned that our lives could be in danger. To hear that she had died was a shock to say the least.

  How was this happening? Intense training and five years of working out in the field…I had felt secure about my position. Alena and Bem, they both had far more experience than I did and now they were gone. What if I was the next to go? Something or someone was coming after Resurrectors and they were attacking the powerful ones first, some of them destined to become Leaders. How many more of the strongest would we lose?

  I had to hold in a chuckle at my train of thought. I was holding myself up at the same level as greats such as Alena already. That hadn't seemed entirely possible before but I guess the truth was that I did have something that set me off from the others and propelled me up to that higher level. Even if most of the others thought of me as the girl who needed an extra year to graduate, the Leaders and I knew of my skill level.

  I closed my eyes. This wasn't happening; I wanted so badly to believe that I was just in some very twisted nightmare and that I would wake
up to find that everything was fine and normal. That in and of itself was hilarious to me. Of course this wasn't some twisted nightmare. I never could imagine something this wild and crazy so it had to be real.

  "Tamesis, are you alright?" Kiran asked. Without even opening my eyes I could tell that he was looking at me with a rather worried expression on his face. It was just like him to be dealing with something tragic and push that aside if he thought a friend needed help. I nodded slowly in response, not saying anything.

  "She just went up against the Angel of Death," Sitara informed him softly. Her words hung in the air, heavy enough that it was almost suffocating.

  "Have the Leaders been notified of the loss of another charge?" There it was, the question everyone asked as soon as they heard about the Angel of Death. No one we heard of had ever won against the side of Death when they actually showed up.

  "There was no loss of charge," I answered, opening my eyes and turning my gaze on Kiran. I was aware that it sounded like a growl but I was getting tired of being underestimated. "My charges are all fine. The Angel of Death lost; he didn't get there fast enough."

  "How…how is it that you beat the Angel of Death to your charges and saved them when everyone else has failed?" Kiran’s eyes were wide as he just stared at me.

  I shrugged and looked away from him, not really bothering to answer. I knew they all wanted to know what had happened, and I wished I had a good answer for them. If I said what I wanted then I would be insulting and possibly alienating my only friends. All I knew was that I was able to save that family. It was because of my unique skills, my thorough healing, my grit and determination; that had to be the reasoning for it.

  The Angel of Death's words rang through my mind once again. He had mentioned a quota of souls and I had to wonder what that meant. Did he have to capture a certain number of souls every day, week, month, or year? There was so much that none of us knew about our enemy, about the one we tried to thwart every time someone was about to suffer through a death that was considered to be unnatural.

  Why didn't the Leaders teach us more? The lessons we received barely mentioned Death's side. To me it was a large hole in our knowledge base and that wasn’t good for any of us. All we knew was that the Angel of Death wanted to stop us from saving people and that there was only ever one of them at a time.

  "She wouldn't say anything to us either," Damir commented.

  "Tam, how many charges have you lost in your five years as a Resurrector?" Kiran asked.

  I looked over at him and gave a half-shrug. "Why does it matter?" But seeing the look on his face I could tell that he was determined to get an answer from me. I sighed and thought about it. Just as I had told the Angel of Death, I've never failed. "None."

  "None?" he questioned. "Now how can that be? Everyone loses charges, especially now with the Angel of Death appearing everywhere."

  Wearily I stood up and slowly made my way for the door. Right now I just wanted to rest and I couldn’t do that while being interrogated. "Maybe he has been too busy with the rest of you," I stated. "How am I to understand why he does what he does?"

  "Where are you going?"

  "Kiran, the last time I checked I don't have to inform you of everything I do and where I go. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go somewhere and try to relax."

  "Tam?" Alaula asked gently. "Will you be alright?"

  I turned and looked at her, nodding slowly as I did so. "I'll be fine Alaula." Though, I had my doubts about it. With the growing number of deaths surrounding us I feared that something was going to happen, and that it wasn't going to be good. A quota of souls? Why would he need to have a quota to fill? Was it possible that the Angel of Death was only in the job for a short time, that it wasn't his decision to participate in any of this? There were too many questions with far too few answers.

  I left the room, trying to make it seem as if my latest heal hadn't taken as much from me as it actually had. The Angel of Death thought he had a soul but I still managed to pull it back. How was it possible? I had not heard of any Resurrector who could do that. A soul, once crossed over, was gone. And what could we expect next? We had well over a hundred Resurrectors at our facility right now, which allowed us to have time to relax.

  Sitara and Alaula loved going to the mall to shop and while I wasn't as fashion conscious most of the time, I did enjoy going there to window shop at the very least. I knew Damir, Kiran, and some of the other male Resurrectors liked to go out to any of the parks to play football or baseball or whatever else when they could round up enough players. I had watched a few games before and it was always a good time.

  We had nice lives, ones that were more comfortable than many could boast of. We were given money to spend at the malls and other stores though I had no idea where the Leaders got the money. Our rooms were nicely furnished in whatever style suited each individual person. We never had to worry about food or bills and the facilities were kept at a nice constant temperature, at least on the inside. There were activities planned for us, such as scavenger hunts, and we celebrated holidays just like humans did.

  For the most part we were completely normal. It sometimes made it easier to think of us as something akin to paramedics or firefighters, going in to save lives not for the money, but because we felt better about life and ourselves if we could save people.

  Whatever was going on now was going to shake the foundations out from underneath many of the Resurrectors. We had never dealt with something like this before and if we had it wasn't in the Resurrector history books. If Resurrectors continued to be killed, would we still be able to go out and act like normal people during free time?

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