by David Beers
Eventually, though, they had moved beyond the poisonous clouds.
Since the attack on the compound, David hadn’t tried connecting with the Unformed, hadn’t even considered going to the Beyond. He knew his orders and asking for more guidance might only give her more opportunity to view him.
Since he saw her on the platform, David had thought these things—but he couldn’t be sure. Staring at the moon, though, David came to know the truth: if he used the gray—began working as his followers termed it—she would be able to see him.
He saw this truth because, all at once, he knew she was working. The last time she had used the gray, he’d collapsed; the power had been too great, too sudden.
Not this time, though, and David didn’t know what that meant exactly. It was controlled. She was using it … like him.
David looked over at Rebecca but she was only staring out her side of the transport, watching the moon.
He wouldn’t worry her, but this was happening and right now. The woman was working, using the gray, and David could go to her. Their connection was live, whatever made them who they were now allowed them to move across a direct line to one another.
David closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were gray. He turned his head to the left so that Rebecca couldn’t see him, and then he went to the woman.
He saw the burning transport, Rhett sitting in the front. The stranger was to his left. David ignored all of that, though, staring at the girl in the back. Orange flames flicked over the transport’s outer shell, but he saw her gray eyes burning inside. Her hand moved just outside the transport and David watched as gray flickering orbs surrounded the ship.
She’s doing what only I should be able to. Right now, right in front of my eyes, she’s using power that doesn’t belong to her. Power that only belongs to the Unformed, and those It chooses. She’s not one of the chosen.
David knew she saw him, hovering outside of the transport like a ghost.
He closed his eyes and when he opened them, he was back in his own transport, staring out at the night sky.
“Rebecca?”
She looked over at him.
“I saw her again,” he said without turning.
“How?”
“We’re connected now, somehow. Whatever I am, she is, too.”
“I just don’t know how that’s possible, David.”
He shook his head. “Me either, but she’s growing powerful. They’re still traveling and I think their ship had been shot. It looked like it was about to crash, but she lit up and saved the thing.”
Rebecca was quiet for a moment, and then said, “How powerful?”
“I can’t tell just on that interaction, but do you remember me in the beginning? Could I have righted a transport while it was crashing?”
Rebecca didn’t need to answer. They both knew he couldn’t have. It took time for David to grow into what he now was.
“Do you think it’s because she’s older?”
David heard the unasked portion of the question: or is she simply better than you?
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, though. The Unformed is with us. Whatever she might be, the Unformed is more.”
“Did you see Rhett?” Rebecca asked.
He nodded. “He looked okay from what I could tell, as okay as someone can be if their transport is seconds from hitting the ground.”
“That’s not funny.”
David gave a weak chuckle. “I know. Not much is funny anymore. Hasn’t been for a long time, I guess.”
The two grew silent. David watched the night sky outside and wondered what would happen when he reached the One Path. He would have to face this woman eventually, the Unformed had commanded it. Or … commanded that he kill her, but he couldn’t send anyone else to do it. No, he would have to face her, and he’d seen two examples of her power already. One an unleashing unlike anything David had ever attempted, the other a controlled, but relatively complex display.
And when had he first sensed her? Weeks ago.
She was advancing rapidly, and David didn’t understand how. His power came from the Unformed.
What was hers stemming from?
It doesn’t matter, he thought. You get to the One Path and you kill her. The whys and hows are only a distraction. Whatever she is, whatever gives her this power, none of it will matter when she’s dead.
Eight
Raylyn thought it ridiculous, what she was about to ask. She didn’t care what the First Priest might say, or really even want. That in itself was an odd feeling, but the past week had … changed things. She didn’t know if the changes were good or bad, only that she couldn’t help them.
Her feelings about Corinth—about the True Faith in general—hadn’t morphed. She loved Corinth and knew without doubt her life’s greatest blessing was being born within His domain.
It was her feelings toward the First Priest that had changed, and more so each day.
So the question she was about to ask … well, she hadn’t at first considered what the First Priest would think of it. And, if he had a problem with it, there wasn’t too much he could do. Raylyn wasn’t considering the long term, obviously. In the long term, if anyone survived that far, there could be repercussions. The First Priest could make life very hard for Raylyn, or perhaps even excommunicate her for her wartime actions. He could, in the long term, do anything he wanted.
But, Raylyn was living for the short term.
She loved Corinth, and while she thought He would prevail, that didn’t mean she would.
The short term was all she had right now, and given that, she wanted Manor by her side.
They were in his room, though with the little time he’d spent there, it wasn’t any more his than hers. He had arrived only an hour earlier—the trip to get him and bring him back taking nearly a full day. Raylyn spent that time preparing to contact the informant, and in a state of almost constant worry about Manor’s safety.
“I might have to leave,” she told her lover.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
She scooted her chair closer to where he sat on the bed, so that their knees were almost touching. He was thinner, but that was to be expected. Not many days had passed, but Raylyn doubted there’d been many calories consumed during them. His face looked harder, though that was partly because he was leaner. Manor was scratched and banged up too. Cuts ran across his cheek and his neck, as well as a large patch of scabbed flesh on his right forearm.
Raylyn was only seeing pieces of the hardships he’d faced. She couldn’t truly know the brutality that he encountered. Deaths innumerable. Blood unimaginable. Just the faces of those monsters who turned on the people they lived with, content to throw them thousands of feet to their death in blazing fires.
Raylyn couldn’t truly know any of that.
Yet, she was going to ask anyway, because all anyone had was the short term.
“I’m chasing the weapon, Manor. Everyone knows what is happening outside the Shrine. The Black is returning and this is Its war. I’ve been chasing Its weapon since you’ve known me. We tried to ….” She felt emotion rising in her at the word we, because it was Lynda she was talking about. The drugs did a pretty good job of keeping her at an even keel, and now they helped shove the emotion down, focusing her. “ … We tried to kill him, but we couldn’t. I’m still tasked with finding him, and sooner or later, I’m going to have to leave here to do it. I … I want you to come with me, Manor.”
She laughed, tears flooding her eyes. Maybe the drugs weren’t that great, because her emotions felt scattered all over the place. She didn’t know what caused the tears, happiness, sadness, or simply exasperation.
Manor reached out and took her hands in his.
“Crazy, right?” she asked. “You just got to safety and I’m asking you to head right back into danger.” Another laugh, and she looked down at the floor. A tear fell from her eye and splashed onto the white tile.
r /> “I …,” Manor started, but his words fell away.
Raylyn didn’t look up, didn’t want to see his face when he told her no. She was leaving this place regardless of whether he came with her, but for a few hours it had seemed that if he said yes … Everything would be infinitely better. She would have someone at her side as she chased this man with gray eyes.
Manor wasn’t going to come, though.
He wouldn’t walk back out into that fire, not with his clothes still reeking of smoke.
“You’re going after the man that did all this?” he asked.
Raylyn nodded.
“Aren’t you scared?”
Again, a shocked laugh escaped her lips. “More than I can explain. I don’t want to do it, at all, but I have to. There’s no one else.”
“Why not?”
She closed her eyes, blocking out even the white tile with her single tear sitting on it. “There was an informant that led us to him in the first place. I’m the only one still alive that had contact with the informant, and so it has to be me that makes contact again. If someone else tried, they’d most likely shut down completely. Especially now, with the Ministries’ backs against the wall and the weapon gaining so much ground.”
“What would I do, Raylyn? If I went with you?”
She squeezed her eyes together, crow’s feet appearing at the corners. “You’d be with me. That’s all. It’s selfish, Manor, but if you came, I wouldn’t be alone. I mean, you look out there at the world—hell, you know. You look out and you see all of that … terror. I don’t want to be alone in it. I don’t want to chase this demon by myself. If you were there, then I wouldn’t have to. I don’t have any work to give you, no assignments. You’ll just be there, with me.”
She felt his hands squeeze hers but neither said anything. Raylyn knew they were being listened to, every word of their conversation monitored and recorded. Perhaps they had even heard the tear that fell. Raylyn didn’t know and didn’t care.
“Okay,” Manor said.
Raylyn’s head jerked up, her eyes opening. “What?”
“Okay,” he said again. “I’ll go with you.”
“You’re serious?”
He nodded. “It’s not like I know anyone, and that attendant who brought me here doesn’t seem like she’d make a great friend.”
More tears fell from Raylyn’s eyes. She pulled Manor close to her, hard, almost taking him off the bed. She held him for a few seconds, her face buried in his neck.
“I hate that bitch, too,” she said, laughing as she did.
The next 24 hours passed without sleep and with an increase in drugs for Raylyn. She thought she should be concerned with how much she was taking, just like she should be concerned about the First Priest thought’s on Manor joining her—but she paid neither any mind.
She didn’t see much of Manor over the next 24 hours, but he seemed to understand. She checked in on him briefly, but he’d been sleeping each time. She hadn’t really even considered the amount of rest he would need.
The drugs, plus his agreeing to go with her, were allowing her to focus.
Corinth’s Shrine was working at full capacity, and now that Raylyn was taking over, the First Priest had moved out of her way. He came and went throughout the day, asking questions and accepting her answers. It took her multiple hours to simply figure out how she could contact the informant. Their nanotech had always been masked, and the path that they took to make contact no longer existed because the compound was empty. Drones showed no signs of life, meaning everyone had abandoned it.
So following the same nano path where they first met wouldn’t work, because the informant couldn’t connect from the same place.
Raylyn spent hours pacing back and forth across her room, a large panel floating in front of the door. She didn’t need any large office to run the operation; everything she wanted was at her command within the panel. Even with all of the True Faith’s power, she couldn’t figure it out, though. She knew nothing about the person—absolutely nothing, and it’s not like there were clues that could help out. All avenues had been controlled by the informant, and now they were gone.
Raylyn kept thinking. Kept pacing.
Two or three hours in, the answer finally came to her.
And it’d been simple. Practically staring at her the entire time. She hadn’t seen the idea because she’d never considered something like that possible.
But it was.
“We have to break the rules,” she told the First Priest.
“How?”
“We sent drones over the compound before we left with the armada. We scanned the place and identified just about 400 people inside it. We’ve got their nano. We know who they are.”
“Okay,” the First Priest said. “They’re gone now, and it doesn’t really matter where they went. That’s 400 people amongst maybe millions.”
“We can break their nano. Reverse engineer it. Every person that was in the compound.”
The First Priest said nothing. He only looked at her, probably trying to understand if she was serious, or had gone insane. Breaking nanotech was perhaps worse than what Raylyn witnessed the Disciple do. To reverse engineer was to play as Corinth. He had created the first nanotechnology, inserting it inside Himself. Taking the first risk. He specifically stated they should never be reverse engineered, not His nor anyone else’s, because to do so would give the breaker complete knowledge of the broken.
If nanotech was reverse engineered, a person’s entire life would be laid bare. The engineer could look into someone’s entire past, perhaps even their future—understanding how their thoughts would affect almost any situation that arose. Nanotech was unique for each individual, more so than even DNA. It replicated at conception, creating unique parameters for each person, but unlike DNA, it held a person’s history inside it.
“No,” the First Priest said.
“It’s the only way,” Raylyn said as if she hadn’t heard him. “We reverse engineer everyone’s nanotech, and we’ll find the informant almost immediately. We can contact them then. Otherwise, I don’t know what to do. Their ID was masked. The path they came down is dead. I know the Priesthood can break it, too. Regardless whether it was legal or not, that Disciple showed me everything I need to know. If he can control people’s nanotech, then you have abilities you shouldn’t. You can do this, and if you want to find the informant, then you’re going to have to do it.”
The First Priest stared at her, his hairless face almost as pale as the wall behind him.
“You’re suggesting we break a Proclamation. That by itself is treason.”
“I’m suggesting we save the True Faith.”
“It’s never been done.”
“If we don’t do it now, no one will ever be able to do it again, because the weapon will kill us all. Corinth created it, and now Corinth’s creation can save us,” Raylyn said, meeting the First’s eyes—her own clear.
“You want to reverse engineer everyone that was at the compound?”
“Yes. At least until we find the person we’re looking for, then we stop.”
“There is no other way?” the First Priest asked.
“I can’t think of one, and I’ve tried. Reverse engineering is the quickest, cleanest way.”
The First looked down at the floor. He hadn’t denied that they had the ability to do it. If Corinth engineered the first nanotech, then surely reverse engineering was possible too, even if illegal.
The First Priest looked back up. “Is your faith slipping, Sister?”
Raylyn’s eyes narrowed at the question. Never in her life had someone asked her such a thing. Raylyn’s faith was unassailable, and had always been so. “No.”
“I wonder … If you think breaking a Proclamation is the only way to save us, then perhaps you don’t believe Corinth will deliver us another way.”
“No, your Holiness. Corinth will deliver us, but if He’s working through me, then this is the only way I know
how. If there’s someone else, someone smarter or who knows something else, then use them and keep the Proclamation.”
The two looked at each other for upward of a minute without speaking. The First Priest seemed to be testing the truth of her words, as if her face was a mirror of her soul. Was she lying? Was another way possible?
“I’ll have it done,” he finally said. “The sin will lay on my shoulders and not yours. Your faith in Corinth will ensure your silence on this. No one is to know. Not your lover. Not anyone. Is that understood?”
“Yes, your Holiness.”
“If this doesn’t work, there will be consequences. For both of us. I’m tying my fate to yours here, Sister. Do you understand that as well?”
“I do,” Raylyn whispered.
Raylyn didn’t soften toward the First Priest, but perhaps she understood the seriousness for her offense a bit better. The man looked … if not scared, then something close to it. He didn’t want to take part in what she was suggesting, but saw no other choice. Still, to Raylyn the situation’s gravity was clearer now, because the First Priest sounded like he might be talking about their death.
His word had been true, though. The reverse engineering began an hour after their conversation. The Shrine must have used every bit of processing power it possessed, because Raylyn started getting information almost immediately.
She waited in her room, staring at the panel and watching as names came and went. The parameters around the engineering were specific. They were looking for anyone that had made contact with the Prevention Division in the last month.
At just about the end of the 24 hour period, a name came back. A single person, and Raylyn’s mouth fell open as she read it.
Rebecca Hollowborne.
The informant was the weapon’s sister.
Rebecca listened to her brother sleeping beside her. He was on his side and snoring lightly. She lay on her back, her head turned slightly to the right and looking at the moon. It was descending and Rebecca had a tough time keeping her eyes off it.