by David Beers
The laughter again, though her face remained still.
“WHAT DO YOU WANT?”
The girl switched from laughing to talking as if someone had simply touched a button. “I want nothing. It is you who want. I have no needs, no desires, only time.”
The electricity turned on again; Abby’s body tightened and her limbs stretched out against the wall. Her face remained the same, though, staring forward with her mouth ajar, her eyes only flickering gray dots. If there was any pain, Abby’s face didn’t show it.
The scene faded leaving David in darkness again.
He watched them pull the body from the room.
A young girl, not even close to her teenage years.
Her clothes were nearly burnt off and her skin ravaged from the electricity. He saw that her hair had caught fire, burning most of her scalp and leaving the skin raw.
They dragged her from the room as if she were trash.
David looked away, unable to handle it any longer.
He knew now what happened to the girl in his picture, the one he’d stared at for so many hours. She’d been burned like garbage.
He was done with this, having seen more than enough, but it wasn’t done with him.
The room was cleaner and more welcoming than the room Abby died in. David saw four people sitting around a table, each of them wearing some sort of decorative designation.
These were the four representatives from the four Ministries.
They were meeting, after having murdered a girl who had no choice in her involvement.
Four others sat against the back walls, obviously the dignitaries’ assistants.
David wondered how it all had happened. He’d been connected with the Unformed only a few years older than this girl, but he hadn’t been captured and killed. What had her parents done? Had they talked about the gift their daughter was given?
Yes, he thought. They had, and that’s why there are still pictures of her. Because her parents thought it was something glorious and they wanted to share it. They didn’t have the knowledge you do, the understanding that the Ministries would never let Abby live once they understood what was happening.
How long had she been connected? It couldn’t have been more than a few years, perhaps as little as one.
“We examined the body,” one of the four at the table said. “There was some abnormality in the brain, though we’re not sure what it means.”
David didn’t even bother looking at their faces, but stared at the back wall, content to listen to the killers. No need to view them as well.
“Who cares what it means?” another said. “She was an aberration, a heathen.”
They practically spit the word.
“First, we need to be concerned with her followers. What is being done inside our domains to ensure they’re eradicated?”
“We’re dealing with them.”
“How? We don’t need another uprising, certainly not after what just happened.”
“We’re flipping people. They speak when enough pressure is applied. They tell on each other. We’ll get them.”
The room fell quiet for a moment.
“I want to know what the brain scan showed,” someone said.
“Her brain stem and neo-frontal cortex were both thicker than average. Much thicker. We don’t know if that’s what allowed the connection to It, or if the connection caused the abnormality.”
“We’re sure that this wasn’t only a brain issue? We’re sure that there is something out there?”
An awkward silence fell and David glanced at the group. The other three were staring at the one who spoke.
“What brain problem would cause her eyes to do that? Or her voice? Does the Old World know something that we don’t about human abilities?”
“Our official position,” the representative said, his voice hiding none of the hate in his mind, “is that this was the Devil. Our Bible doesn’t permit such alien creatures as you all insist on calling it.”
Again, another awkward silence.
“It doesn’t matter what we call it. Or what it is, really. The Devil or an alien, we know it wasn’t a brain abnormality. Something connected with this child, and the word spread quickly. We didn’t kill it; we only killed the child. Its vessel. If it returns, what are we to do?”
David realized that this was the beginning.
When the holocaust of people like him began.
“Who says it’ll happen again?” someone asked.
“It might. Whatever that thing was, it might try again.”
“Diligence,” someone said. “We monitor our subjects more closely, and we kill off anyone who followed this girl. We kill off anyone we even think might have believed in her. We kill off anyone we think might be contacted in the future. To be clear, we kill anyone associated with it, and we continue killing them as long as this rock spins.”
“I propose we meet back in a year, and we discuss what’s been done. We should all have made significant progress in both current tactics and future strategy.”
Everyone around the table agreed. David found himself staring at the wall, having heard the direction for what would span another 5,000 years. He’d witnessed the brief conversation that would culminate with himself being hunted.
He hadn’t known a lot about what happened back then, and the vision didn’t show him everything—but that hadn’t been the purpose. It filled in the details of what he already knew. It revealed what they would do to a little girl that had been dragged unknowingly into something encompassing all of time and space. It showed their evil in perfect clarity, and that regardless of the truth behind his action, of the fate in it all, they would do the same to him and everything he loved.
There was one more thing for him to see.
The woman was young, perhaps in her late twenties. She had blonde hair, cut short. She was thin. Pretty, though not strikingly beautiful.
David was in her house, which clearly resided in the Old World. Two men were with her, one perhaps her father—the facial characteristics in each were too similar to not be family.
The other man was tied up and gagged on the floor. His eyes were open, his left ear bleeding. A gash ran across his forehead, right through the middle of a large bruise.
He was alive, and the woman and her father stood above him.
Who is this? David thought.
David had never been able to describe the Unformed’s communication. It didn’t start in words, but rather a feeling that possessed David. It came over him all at once, wiping away any of his own thoughts or desires. The feeling consumed him, and it was in those moments that he truly understood the Unformed’s power. David didn’t exist for a few moments, becoming only a vessel for the thoughts of another being that was too vast, too powerful, for him to ever fully comprehend.
He knew the Unformed was being gentle in Its communication, too. It had to be, or else David would cease existing forever, his own consciousness obliterated.
Eventually, the feeling always coalesced into a thought, the Unformed’s crippling nature receding.
This is your opposite.
David stared, his mind slowly coming back to itself. There were more questions to ask, but he didn’t want to. It was too much, the Unformed’s communication. Even four words left David empty, as though every particle of energy had been exhausted.
His mind slowly regained momentum and he returned to the present, listening to the man and woman talk. He needed to figure this out on his own without the Unformed answering him. He simply couldn’t take much more.
This was her. The woman he had felt.
There was nothing to her visibly, but David knew that meant little. The girl he just watched die hadn’t seemed like much, but those like him weren’t relying on their own power. They relied on the Unformed’s.
And that’s where his confusion arose.
Because how was she David’s opposite, if the Unformed wasn’t connected with her?
He moved
in closer, looking at her eyes. Dark green. A bit darker than his own.
He looked to her father, at his hands. His knuckles were swelling, which meant the girl most likely hadn’t used her power to disable the man on the floor.
David turned back to her.
The Unformed was listening, and if David asked, he would be answered.
But the weight of it, the pressure.
It didn’t matter how this was happening right now. He could figure out how she attained power later. He needed to know what this woman would do, because if the Unformed was showing him her, then she was clearly important.
I felt her. On my own.
This is your opposite, the Unformed had said.
Only one question mattered, and it was the one David had been asking since this all began. He steadied himself.
What do I do?
The scene in front of him played out, David not knowing if it was something from the past or if it was happening now. It didn’t matter. He waited for the Unformed.
Perhaps 20 seconds passed, and then the feeling again rolled over him—if it could be described that way. His own thoughts disappeared, shattered by the external being filling him. His vision hazed and he lost focus on the faces before him, his mental state weakening quickly.
Slowly, the words coalesced and the weight upon him drained.
She will kill you. No one else. Only her.
David felt himself growing more conscious, more aware of his surroundings. For a few seconds, he thought he was going to be okay.
And then the weight rushed back, crushing David. There was no way out. No life after such pressure.
Two words came as blackness overtook him.
KILL. HER.
Fourteen
The Old World Ministry
Daniel’s hands hurt like hell. His body, too, though that was more from soreness than injury from the fight.
“I need some water,” he said, suddenly feeling weak. He sat down on the chair in his living room.
“Are you okay?” Nicki asked.
“Yes. Just get me some water please.”
He watched as his daughter went into the kitchen, then turned to the man on the floor. The sun was up outside and only the man before him had slept any the previous night, primarily because Daniel had knocked him out.
The bastard was strong, though. Deceptively so, and if he hadn’t been in an awkward position strangling Nicki, Daniel doubted he’d still be alive. He doubted Nicki would be either.
The man stared back at him, his eyes calm, as if this was all part of his plan—to be bleeding and tied up on the ground.
Daniel kept the gag in his mouth. They had searched his vehicle and his person, but found nothing. There was the gun, which Nicki pointed Daniel to, and then the folder full of Nicki’s medical records. There hadn’t been anything else in the car, and for some reason, the man hadn’t brought the gun when he broke in. Daniel thought he had wanted to use his hands. The gun wouldn’t be intimate enough for the sick fuck.
Still, they saw no indication of who he was or who sent him. He hadn’t said a word either.
Daniel supposed he didn’t need anything else, though, except to know why the man was here.
Nicki came back into the living room carrying the glass of water. She walked over to his chair and handed it to him, then took a step back and looked at the stranger.
“What are we going to do?” she whispered.
Daniel didn’t have too many plans floating through his head, but he couldn’t very well tell his daughter that. She was looking for him to lead. “The Church will know he’s missing by the end of the day. He’ll need to check in or something, and when he doesn’t, they’ll know there’s a problem.”
The man lay on his side, his eyes fixed on the wall across the room.
“Then they’ll send more,” Daniel said. “To look for him, and to find you.”
This was a real mess, and Daniel hadn’t thought it could get this bad. He knew he’d said things to Nicki, describing how careful they needed to be but—
You didn’t really think they’d send one, did you? Because they hadn’t done it before, not to you or your family. Maybe to others, but not to you.
“Was it the Church that sent you?” he asked.
The man did nothing; he didn’t even blink.
“Useless,” he said and leaned back in his chair. He tilted his head up and looked at the ceiling. A few seconds passed and he knew Nicki was waiting. “We’re going to have to leave. There’s not really any other option. They’ll be here by tomorrow night, the next day at the latest.”
“No,” Nicki said.
Daniel’s head shot up, his neck turning so that he was staring at his daughter. “What?”
She shook her head. “No. You’re not leaving. I will. It’s me they’re after. I’m not dragging you into this.”
Daniel laughed. Lord in heaven, how had he done so poorly raising this girl? He’d tried to teach her what the Church wanted her to know and shelter her from all this. Yet, now as the world was growing colder, her naivety showed just how poorly prepared she was.
“Honey, either we both go or we both stay. We’re not separating.”
She shook her head again, tears in her eyes now.
“You think that if they show up here, and you’re gone, but I’m not, they’re going to let me live? Whatever they want to do with you, they’ll do the exact same thing to me.”
Nicki said nothing, only stared down at the stranger for a few seconds.
“I … I don’t know,” she said. “This isn’t your fault. It’s mine. I don’t want you to have to leave everything, the restaurant, the house. Your life.”
Daniel put the water glass on the end-table, sat up on his chair, bracing himself on the armrest, then stood up. He ignored the man on the floor as he stepped to his daughter. He pulled her close.
“None of that matters. It’s you that matters. It’s always been you. We’ll leave together and we’ll figure out what to do, but together. This isn’t your fault. It’s theirs. It’s that man’s on the floor and the people that sent him. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
They hugged each other for a time, neither wanting to release. A minute or more passed, and then Nicki said, “What do we do with him?”
Daniel let go and turned around. The man still stared forward, not acknowledging them at all. Daniel ran through the options in his head, not wanting to say them aloud. Telling Nicki wouldn’t help matters any—
Wait. I’m still doing it, he thought. I’m still trying to shelter her, and I can’t anymore. Because the truth is, I might not live much longer, and I will die if it means she keeps living. And if she’s alone? Sheltering her now won’t help a bit.
He sighed, something inside him still not wanting to tell her. Daniel shoved it aside. “We leave him here or we bring him with us.”
“What happens if we leave him here?” she asked.
“He’ll tell them what he knows and then probably be sent after us again, but with more people.”
“And if we bring him with us?”
“He’ll probably try to kill us if he gets the chance. He’ll try to alert the Church if he can.”
They stared for another second, and then Nicki asked, “What if we killed him?”
Daniel’s eyes widened, though he didn’t look at Nicki. It wasn’t bad that she asked, only shocking, and Daniel didn’t want her to think he was judging her.
Because it might come to that. God bless, it really might.
“If we killed him, they’d still come, but he wouldn’t be able to tell them anything.”
Nicki was quiet, but Daniel understood the question neither wanted to ask.
Why don’t we do it, then?
Daniel wouldn’t lie to himself. He didn’t want to kill the man, not now that there wasn’t a present danger. Murder … up until these last few moments, he never thought something like that would take place in his life.
There
were other reasons, though, to keep the man living.
“If we don’t kill him,” he said, “we might be able to get something from him. If we take him with us.”
“Okay, then,” Nicki said with a nod. “Then we take him. Let’s start packing.”
She looked to him and Daniel to her. Her face was pale but her eyes were dry now. Daniel hated this more than he could put into words, what was about to happen to his little girl. Things he didn’t know, and probably couldn’t imagine—but the Church was coming and she had the right attitude. They needed to accept life as it was, and not try to force it into something they wanted.
“Okay,” he said. “You pack. I’ll watch him. Then we’ll switch.”
The Cardinal Wen Nitson stood outside the Pope’s chamber.
He had no desire to be here, not under these conditions. Usually, it was in his interest to get face time with the Pope … but not today.
Not about this.
Wen received news this morning that the man sent to pick up the countryside girl hadn’t made a report. He hadn’t returned calls. He had, the report said, gone completely dark.
Completely dark.
Wen didn’t like that term. He wasn’t a military man but a man of God, and had no interest in such terms as that. He had no interest in the sight or anything that came along with it. He’d been given the damned responsibility while being told that it would be an afterthought. Most of those with the sight had already been eradicated. There weren’t many—if any at all—left inside the Old World’s borders.
Yet, here he was, in front of the Pope’s door, about to be granted entrance only to deliver bad news.
The question that scratched at his mind, like some sort of spider crawling across the folds of his brain, was why he’d been called here to begin with.
Wen had reported the news to his direct superior, as he understood the Holy Doctrine of Cover Your Ass, but he hadn’t thought much of it. There was a lot to be done, and one girl with the sight—or the possibility of the sight—didn’t seem that big of a deal.
Yet, within three hours he’d been summoned across the Vatican to see the Pope.
