by M F Sullivan
Even after all these years, her Family terrified her. That was why the idea of a marathon designed to poke fun at them didn’t stir her offense: she needed it more than any human did. Her Father, in particular, was always popping up to startle her. What had just happened was such a common occurrence that she should have grown to anticipate it.
Take, for instance, the day the Hierophant visited Cassandra after the disastrous birth of her child. Dominia would never forget the jolt when, tray of food and coffee cautiously balanced in her hands, she nudged open the door of her wife’s hospital room to find the Hierophant holding her Cassandra’s delicate hand in his big, spidery own. The yet-new martyr choked on her tears.
“I was so hopeful. I believed so much— I believed, I believed.”
“I know, my dear. I know. But there are times when belief is not enough. Times when the will of God, mysterious as it is, must be accepted. All tragedies that arise do so to strengthen the faith of Man.”
“My faith is so shaken. My faith—”
She hiccupped and stopped herself to follow the Hierophant’s eyes as he acknowledged Dominia’s presence. Grieving Cassandra looked right through her, released a sob, and ducked her head to study the Holy Father’s hands. “I wish I had never done this. I love Dominia, but for this? For all of this…”
The sting! It was natural to be hurt, Dominia told herself, as natural as it was for Cassandra to think such a thing. Her gentle eyes, after all, had skipped over the lunch tray. While she put away the offending human-based meal and lowered upon her wife’s bedside, the Hierophant tutted.
“That is no way to think. The Lord called you to His service for a purpose. No martyr is expendable. No martyr is without value. Your baby”—the Hierophant bent to kiss the back of Cassandra’s hands as she burst into tears on the words; she had to be consoled by both the Holy Father and her wife before she was able to accept his repetition of the phrase—“your baby did not suffer, although you did. But through her absence, and your suffering, how close you’ve come to God! How blessed you are with a loyal wife, a loving Family, a wealth and privilege unheard of by any but those few I call my true children.”
“But I want my baby.” Cassandra’s lips trembled with the same suppressed sobs wracking her shoulders. “I just want her to be alive. I wanted to name her ‘Lucy.’ Is that a stupid name? It was his mom’s name.” Her eyes met Dominia’s red-ringed own with guilt, but the General stroked her hair.
“It would have been cute,” the future widow assured her grieving wife. “A sweet name, for a sweet girl.”
Something in this paused Cassandra’s tears. Dominia felt exposed until the woman shut her eyes and said through trembling lips, “I wish you would hate me.”
Alarm plunged from the top of her skull to the base of her spine. How was she to feel on such words? At her (perhaps sharp) demand to know why Cassandra would say such a thing, the woman lamented, “Because then I’d have no reason to live, and I could die. I could be at peace, alone, with him.”
“What was his name?” asked the Hierophant.
The query calmed Cassandra by its tone enough to say, “Ben—Benedict. He was also—he—” Cassandra trailed off, unable to bear the look on the General’s face as poisonous recognition flowed in. “He was in the military, too.”
Yes. Benedict Miller, with a mother named Lucy. She remembered that name like all the names of the remembered dead (easier before the DIOX-I revealed so many). But Benedict, she remembered better than the others. The Battle for the Reclamation of Mexico was a fresh wound in those nights; her time spent as a POW still stuck in her teeth like the grit of Nogales.
If the suspicion that she had killed Cassandra’s lover had ever crossed her mind before, it was tucked beneath more relevant thoughts. Confronted plainly, the Holy Father’s black eyes drilling into her from Cassandra’s other side in that cramped hospital room, Dominia understood at last the depth of her responsibility. The nature of her bond with her wife. What strength of spirit it took for Cassandra to love her at all, even if, at first, she’d but pretended! Ben Miller: the young, impromptu soldier and even more impromptu jailer she had befriended, then used like a doorway by murdering and escaping in the midst of a momentary lapse of the human’s judgment. His death had bothered her more than the average because he was a young guy shipped from home to serve as backup, and because she had discovered on his person a photo of his mother. Humans had an ugly habit of sending kids to war: especially in emergency situations, which the Reclamation had been. It had been a dark fortnight for Dominia, and for many others. When the dust was washed from her scalp, the battle remained.
That damned spot. A symbol of how bad things were. Its memories drove her day after day to the seaside, unaware that Cassandra had learned of her travels on news stations that (in the most literal sense) religiously announced the comings and goings of the Family across the globe. Cassandra turned her hatred for Dominia into a doorway of her own. One which was exit only.
“I think I meant to kill you,” her wife confessed, lips twisted with wet despair. “But the way you looked at me the first time you saw me…oh, Dominia.”
“I’m so sorry,” was all the General could say; Cassandra shut her eyes.
“I didn’t want to tell you because I didn’t want to hear you lie. You’re not sorry. He was any other dead man to you. He’s only important to you now because he was important to me. And if you hadn’t killed him, you would have been killed, yourself. So, you don’t regret it. I’m the only one here who has anything to regret.”
“But”—the Hierophant stroked her hand—“you have everything to gain.”
Her lips were back to trembling again. “All I ever wanted was a family.”
Magnanimous as ever, the Holy Father lifted his eyebrows. “My girl, be glad: you have one.”
Afterward, he took the General aside in the hall and asked how she would like to be Governess of the United Front. Fine time to ask. Finer time to accept. No doubt his ability to pull a stunt like that and still get an affirmative response was the reason he showed up now, his presence a threat not just to Dominia and her friends, but all Kabul. Kabul, which was supposedly protected by the Hunters. In a world where cameras were everywhere, even in the eyes of passersby, was Dominia to believe her Father was the only one with omnipotent access to every device? That the Hunters didn’t know her Father was there? That she was there?
That they didn’t know Kahlil abetted them?
As her legs pumped with the pace of her run, she couldn’t help but think something here was wrong—and not, necessarily, Miki. All the major players—at least, her Father and the Lamb—seemed in on the game; why wouldn’t the Hunters be? That was what all this seemed more and more, in truth. What Tobias had said. A game. She wished she could flip the board, but she supposed that meant suicide in this context, so she wiped the metaphor from her mind as she stood before the pawnshop. Miki’s back door was still open; the General’s entrance was silent, but that silence proved needless when she arrived at Kahlil’s apartment to find the prostitute and the Hunter already having a too-loud fight.
“I think you could have warned us!” Miki’s sharp tone resolved when Dominia pushed open the front door and laid eyes on the man who, beneath his beard and olive skin, nonetheless paled to macabre slate. Somehow, Miki had discovered the news of the day, and agreed that her friend should have been wise to it. Never a good sign. The martyr was upon Kahlil before he so much as moved, holding the human foot above the floor to be shaken in one brisk whip of his head. Amid the uproar, Basil barked for joy.
“Is there something you’d like to tell us, Kahlil?”
“I didn’t know your Family was here! I swear, I swear, I didn’t know, oh, Allah. You think I sit around switching between security feeds all day long? Huh? You think al-Saalihin would actually tell me anything?” While trying to extricate himself from the martyr’s fists with one hand, he used the other to straighten his crooked glasses. “They can
’t stand my guts! I’m their tech support. I run their Halcyon accounts. I’m PR! They used to bully guys like me—well, not in school, but in the crappy neighborhoods where they grew up.”
“Then you’d better start doing your job and spin your story.”
“You tell ’im, boss.” Miki, arms crossed and foot propped against the wall, did not look as belligerent as intended due to her short-shorts. “I have a hard time believing your bosses didn’t send out some kind of high-priority emergency alert as soon as the Hierophant set foot on Kabul’s soil. You let us walk out of this place knowing those creeps are out there wandering around!”
“I swear, Miki, I didn’t. I’m their cleanup crew! They don’t tell me anything. Do you remember—remember when they tried that coup in Iran a couple of years ago? That was my first year on the job! How do you think I felt, having to handle the social-media backlash?”
“How do you think they felt?” asked Dominia, rattling him once more for good measure. “The people who lost their lives, their families—how did they feel? How do you think they will feel when whatever violent conflict brought to this city spends more lives today? You’re responsible by failing to tell me these important details.”
Fear vanished from Kahlil’s face, and his expression hardened to a steel mask that came from somewhere else. Some divine source, she thought in ironic tone. “How about all the people you killed, huh? All the humans killed in all the wars you’ve fought, all the things you’ve done. War crimes.”
“War crimes,” scoffed Dominia. The man sneered.
“Yeah, war crimes. Torture, genocide, enslavement, who knows what else. And then there’s your so-called legitimate battles.”
“All my battles are, by definition, legitimate battles. Battles with soldiers who signed up to be there.”
“I guess those people murdered in the Black Night volunteered for camp?”
Miki averted her gaze. Nostrils flaring, the martyr lowered the human to the floor. After he had put the couch between himself and the General, Kahlil cleared his throat, straightened his shirt, and said, “Every human being is a soldier in the war against you, your Father, and your so-called people.”
“So why didn’t you tell me he was here?”
“I haven’t been debriefed yet.”
“Miki”—eyes blazing, Dominia turned to assess the prostitute—“why are we wasting our time with this idiot?”
“Because he’s going to have information on the Lazarenes. Right, Kahlil?” The prostitute stared the man down with a devilish look.
“When my computer has finished decrypting his location for the week.” The man stepped toward the humming collection of screens and towers so old as to practically be artifacts. Somehow, these constituted one device, though said “one device” took up a quarter of his living room. “It’s not instantaneous. This is how he protects himself, and why the Hunters and your Family get only a slim window of opportunity to acquire him. Every Friday night at nine o’clock, wherever he is, he releases a message in a few secret digital channels—mostly via direct messages to his priests, but also in one of two Lazarene chat rooms with forever-changing addresses. This message is encrypted, and the instructions for the computer on how to derive the key are also encrypted, but known to those who use the chat rooms, and to worshipers. It’s not dissimilar to blockchain, the basis for most digital currencies, but it’s lighter, and instead of crunching problems to mine for digital coins, computers are crunching problems to mine Lazarus’s encryption. Like digging out of a cave, instead of mining.”
“Reminds me of the protein somehow,” mused the martyr, glancing into the bright eyes of the dog. “If everybody in the world is trying to get ahold of him for one reason or another, why is he releasing information on his location?”
Miki, annoyed by Dominia’s ignorance, said, “Because he’s got people to save.”
This was a controversial topic. Ask her Father and the Church, and Lazarus’s blood was a one-way ticket to permanent excommunication—the condemnation of the soul to eternal hell. Miki, however, was one of a great many people who seemed to believe the opposite, the subject of Lazarus being the point where the common cultist joined with the Red Market priestess. Indeed, they sometimes seemed part of the same faith. This was so well veiled from Dominia for over three hundred years that, seeing so now, she hardly understood. “So Lazarus travels the world like Cicero and the Lamb, distributing his location of the week to humans who believe in him. The Abrahamian Hunters intercept these codes in hopes of capturing him, and using him to…what?”
“What do you want him for?” asked Kahlil with a shrug and an adjustment of his glasses. “Whether or not he’s a martyr, he’s a useful one if he can resurrect the dead.”
For her own benefit, the General pressed, “Do you believe he can?”
The young man turned his back on the martyr to study his computer’s progress. “Why does it matter? Like I said. I’m tech support at worst, PR at best.”
“I guess I wanted you to clap your hands for Tinkerbell.” From behind the human’s shoulder, the muttering General studied the screen. She had to admit, the eye’s translation of Arabic to English was useful. “Get me the second this is done. How much longer?”
“Even the fastest computers can only manage to decrypt the code by Saturday night, and mine’s the fastest in Kabul. It’s been at it for twenty hours already. Any minute now, it will be finished.”
After translating “Saturday night” to “Noctisatur” in her head, she nodded. “And the rest of the Hunters will lag behind us?”
“Better,” insisted Miki, her grin ear to ear. “Kahlil is the one who gets them the information every week! He’s going to have a computer problem tonight, right?” This, with a cheesy wink to her friend, who rolled eyes that landed on the General.
“Yeah. I’m willing to hold the information back for Miki’s sake because, well…my career is ruined either way.” His annoyance was directed to the prostitute. “But this way, there’s a chance I can salvage it by making it seem like a computer problem. It’s not the end of the world to them if they miss one Lazarene ceremony, since even if they’re able to interrupt it, they’re not going to catch him.”
“Why not?”
At Dominia’s question, Kahlil offered an answer that reminded her chillingly of her Father’s uncanny movements earlier that evening. “I don’t know. I’ve heard he just disappears.”
Shaking her head, the General made her way down the cluttered hall and let herself into the cramped guest bathroom. Miki was not more than a few steps behind as the martyr washed her face in the sooty-looking sink. After flipping on a single lightbulb whose pale fluorescence amplified the depressing state of the broken tile floor, the human rustled through all visible drawers. Dominia watched her shameless snooping with fond relief.
“I’m glad I made you stay behind.”
As Miki straightened with a pair of tarnished scissors in hand, the human exclaimed, “What was that with you? You see something, or what?”
“Not just the Lamb, but the Hierophant.” The General allowed herself steered to a seat upon the toilet lid.
“I gathered from what you said in there…are you all right?”
“Fine. I was surprised. He tried to convince me to come home.” Memories of her discussion with her Father reminded her that she had walked in on Kahlil and Miki having an argument, which she had thought to be about her Family—but perhaps she’d been wrong. “What were you and Kahlil fighting about when I came back?”
“Oh”—Miki turned to close the door but for a crack—“I was pissed because he wouldn’t try to find you on a camera feed. I didn’t know where you were! What if I needed to help you?”
She was a good kid. “You’re a kinder friend than I deserve. When I talk to my Father, I always walk away feeling like there is no real way to change. Like I’ll always be the same evil person he taught me to be.”
“You’re being too harsh on yourself! Look, h
ey!” When her eyes remained lowered, the scissors tapped Dominia’s ear, and the cold contact sent them springing up. “I mean it. I already told you that nobody has to forgive or accept what you were before, but the worthy will be able to see that who you are now is different. You have to see yourself as different. But, if you can’t forgive yourself, at least try to learn. Look”—she glanced slyly toward the cracked door, with the dog waiting outside and the unbreaking flow of distant keystrokes—“if I tell you something to make you feel better, will you keep it secret? It’s bad for business. Well…this business. Sometimes it’s great for business, you wouldn’t believe.”
Embarrassing how quickly Dominia’s self-pity morphed into burning curiosity: she waited, the picture of childlike impatience as Miki leaned in and whispered, clipping the air with her scissors. “I was born with a penis.”
“Really!” Astonished, Dominia found herself reacting in the stupidest way possible: a way that made her think of blushing, flustered Tenchi sticking his foot in his mouth on the Jun’yō only after she realized she’d said, “But you’re so hot!”
Luckily, Miki had a good enough sense of humor to raise her head in a cackle. As she resumed snipping the stray hairs of twice-embarrassed Dominia’s ’do, she exclaimed, “I know, right? Modern medicine, it’s a miracle! All thanks to gene therapy, hormones, and one great surgeon.” Like an all-business hair stylist, Miki directed Dominia’s head this way and that. “But none of that matters, see? I mean, look at me.”
Before Dominia said, “No,” Miki slipped down shorts and skivvies, and grinned to see Dominia’s furious blush. “See? A sputtering lesbian is praise from Caesar.”
“It’s—very organic looking.”
“You want to touch it?” asked the leering human while Dominia averted her gaze.
“Um, no! Not—”
“You’re right, this bathroom is gross, and that dope will be back before we get anywhere. When we’re alone, senpai.” To Dominia’s relief, she slipped her bottoms back up, and Dominia looked down to make eye contact with Basil, whose tail wagged through the crack of the door. Pervert, she told him in her head, and his mouth opened in a big doggie grin that made her smirk. Miki, redressed and back to clipping, missed this.
