by David Beers
The number of questions increased as the weeks dragged on, as did their frequency. Their intensity. Because the people beneath Rachel, they had killed for her. Men and women both died, as did children. They died because they believed—their faith greater than that of those they had killed.
They had been promised a Union, and they demonstrated their faith by killing those who would stop them.
Everyone was ready for the Union, tired of the war, tired of the death, tired of the pain.
Everyone was ready except Rachel.
She told her lieutenants to hold the line and that she would return in two days. There were questions, but gray eyes and knowledge of true ruthlessness kept those questions from growing. Her lieutenants acquiesced and Rachel left.
She went back to the woods. The same ones where she had shacked up with undeserving men, living the life of an animal. Winter snow covered everything and bitter cold seemed to rage against the very idea of her existence. As if even the weather understood that she brought death wherever she went, and only its cold embrace was allowed to do that.
Rachel paid neither the snow nor the vengeful weather any mind.
She was here to answer the question posed to her. She sat down in the snow, closed her eyes, and when she opened them, flickering gray looked out at the world.
For two days she sat in that cold, her body neither freezing nor moving.
Even the need to urinate didn’t affect Rachel, her bladder staining the clothes she wore. Her determination could be admired by anyone, regardless whether they thought her angel or demon.
At the end of two days, her gray eyes returned to their normal shade. She stared at falling snow and understood that she would never find an answer to the question. No matter how long she spent next to the Beyond or looking for the Unformed—the answer wasn’t meant for her. Rachel Veritros would never know what It wanted, and she’d have to live with that.
The Ministers could ask their question, but in the end, they would bend the knee.
Everyone would bow to the Unformed.
Rachel returned to her lieutenants with answers to their questions, even if not to her own. They would go to the Nile next week, and they would call forth the Unformed. The Union would occur and the bloodshed would end.
“They’re waiting for you,” her lieutenants said.
“Who?”
“Everyone still alive.”
“Our people? The Unformed’s?”
“No, Rachel,” her lieutenants said. “The Ministries. They know you’re coming, and they’re waiting.”
Nine
Nicki stood in the desert, the sun beating brilliantly down from above. She’d only been standing underneath it for a few minutes, but her skin was already turning pink. The transport lay 100 feet away, and the two men that had kidnapped her stood next to it. Once she landed the thing, they hadn’t bothered her, but simply let her exit and wander out on the sand.
Where could she run to?
Is that it, or are they frightened? she wondered.
Nicki thought one of them might have a healthy respect, if not actual fear. The other, though? She wasn’t sure that man had ever felt fear.
Nicki closed her eyes tight. She felt like she’d been in some kind of trance for the past three days—unable to tell what was real and what had simply been a feverish dream. Standing here under the brutal sun, she felt like herself for the first time …
Yet, what the hell had she just done with that transport?
She opened her eyes and turned to look at it. She could see the bottom from where she stood, a chunk of it missing, revealing burnt and twisted wiring. Someone had shot at them, though Nicki didn’t have a clue as to whom, or why.
I don’t know anything …
The thought was terrifying and immediately brought tears to her eyes.
Because she didn’t know anything. Not where she was, not who these people were, not where she was being taken, nor what they would do to her when she arrived.
I’m alone.
Nicki didn’t know what had happened in the transport, the same as she hadn’t in the motel. She’d felt something up there in the sky, an almost electrical power, and now she felt none of it. Her body was what it had always been, and whatever happened above …
Had she seen her father?
No. That wasn’t possible either.
Nicki felt her knees grow weak, and before she could fall, she sat down hard in the sand.
“Hey.”
Nicki jumped backward, her face jerking up, looking in front of her toward the voice.
“It’s okay.”
Her father stood there, or … not exactly. He was ephemeral; Nicki could see through him, the sand and blue sky behind him. Yet, he was there, too. She couldn’t deny it, the shape of his face, the color of his hair—all of it almost as real as …
“Dad? Are you alive?”
She watched as he chuckled. “Yes. I’m not an angel, Nicki.”
Nicki shook her head, not understanding. Her hands were dug into the sand and she finally realized the heat of it, lifting them up and shaking them off.
“How are you here? It’s you? It’s not a trick?” Nicki didn’t know what to think, let alone believe. The insanity of it was as apparent to her as the sand’s heat, but was it any more insane than the transport she’d landed minutes ago? Because if she didn’t believe that happened, she only had to turn around and look.
“It’s a long story, and we don’t have time right now. It’s me, though. Do you remember your mom’s favorite color?”
Nicki’s eyes narrowed, but only for a second. “Yes. Do you?”
“She didn’t have one,” her father said. “She said she wasn’t picking just one so that people could have something to talk about.”
A smile sparked on Nicki’s lips as she remembered her mother, but it died quickly. Even her memory couldn’t force away this chaos. “How? How are you here?”
“There isn’t time, honey. I’ll explain later. First, are you alright? Have they hurt you?”
“I … I don’t know,” she said, answering honestly. “I don’t feel any pain, but I haven’t … I haven’t been here, Dad. For days, it feels like. I can’t remember the last time I just sat somewhere, being fully there. I’m scared, Dad. I’m ….”
Nicki tried to say scared again, but no sound came out. Her voice broke and she looked down at the sand between her knees. Her hands dug back into it, anger and frustration turning her knuckles white as she pushed down on the flinty earth.
“I need you to focus, honey. You’ve got to be strong right now. I know you don’t understand any of this. I don’t either. It’s easy for me to say because I’m not sitting there in a desert, but that doesn’t change the facts. You’ve got to hold it together if I’m going to be able to help. Now, I need to know where you are. I need you to try to tell me. I’m with people who can come get you.”
“Who?” Nicki asked. “Are you safe, Dad?”
“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, but I’m fine. Now, quickly, what does the place look like?”
“Can you see me?” she said.
“Yes, you, but not much else. It looked like you were flying over sand in the transport, but I can’t see very far beyond you. I think your sight is controlling this, not mine.”
Nicki looked at the ephemeral figure in front of her, realizing for the first time that her mind might actually be creating it. That maybe her Dad wasn’t there at all, but this was just a hallucination.
No, she thought. No. He knew Mom’s color.
Or maybe you knew Mom’s color, and you were simply telling yourself it.
“Nicki?” the floating figure said.
“I don’t know what’s real anymore. You. This place. The people I’m with. It could all just be in my mind.”
“Okay, honey. Okay. Look, right now, just tell me what you see. We can deal with the rest later, but I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay here with you.”
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Maybe he was right. What other choice did she have? To sit out here in this desert with these strange men? If they were all only in her head, then maybe her make believe father could come save her from these make believe kidnappers.
Nicki looked around the desert, trying to see anything that might give a clue, but there was only sun and sand stretching in all directions. She’d only read about such places in school. “All I see is desert, Dad. That’s it.”
“Are there any physical markings? Any buildings? Anything at all?”
“No. There’s nothing out here.”
Nicki heard someone else talking, though it wasn’t her father. The voice sounded distant, as if a door or wall might be between them.
“Ask her if she can see the sun. Can she describe where it is in the sky?”
“Honey—”
“I heard him,” she said. “It’s a little bit above the horizon.”
Rhett stood next to the Disciple, unbound by either physical restraints or hijacked nanotech. His shoulder didn’t hurt, though he still had a bullet lodged inside it. Rhett thought the Disciple must be doing something with his nanoparticles, using some kind of pain dulling medication. He didn’t care—was actually glad for it.
Rhett felt the heat from above and silently missed the True Faith’s SkyLight. The two of them were staring at the girl who sat 100 feet from the transport.
Rhett had thought only one person controlled the power he’d seen minutes ago. He didn’t know what the Disciple was thinking, but neither of them did anything as the girl exited the transport and walked out into the desert. She had landed it, her eyes blazing with David’s gray. The door next to her opened without any input from the Disciple or Rhett, and she’d simply stepped out.
Rhett couldn’t see her eyes now. He didn’t know if they were gray, but he saw her nearly collapse on the sand.
“She’s talking to herself,” Rhett said. He could hear the girl’s voice, though not the exact words.
It was odd speaking to the Disciple as if they weren’t diametrically opposed. Both would kill each other without hesitation, but … even with the Disciple’s otherness, he wasn’t like her. His eyes didn’t spark gray and he’d only been able to watch as the transport plummeted toward their death.
The Disciple didn’t respond. Rhett looked over at him … and forgot about the girl for a second. He saw a focus that he hadn’t ever seen before. The Disciple might not even know Rhett stood next to him. Rhett was completely forgotten, only the girl held any space in the Disciple’s mind.
Now, Rhett thought. If you’re going to kill him, you do it now, and he might not even notice.
The thought was there, but it died quickly.
The Disciple looked at him.
“That’s not a good idea, Rhett Scoble.”
“Do you know everything I think?” Rhett asked.
“I know what I need to.”
Rhett felt no sinking feeling in his stomach. No fear rose in him. His mentality was that of the prisoner who knew he would be executed. Perhaps when the moment of death came, he would feel fear, but for now, he’d accepted his fate.
He could only look for opportunities … and apparently not think about them for any length of time when they arrived.
Rhett looked back at the girl. “Still think you’ll get her to the One Path?”
“I have no choice,” the Disciple said.
“They’re coming, Dad.”
“Right now?”
Nicki was looking over her shoulder at the transport. “Well, one of them. I guess he’s the one in charge. He’s coming to get me.”
“What you did with the transport, can you do that now?” her father asked. “I don’t know if it’s the sight. I don’t know what it is, but can you do it now?”
Nicki shook her head as she watched the man step across the sand. His steps were agile, like a dancer’s … and Nicki saw something else about him—even from all this distance, laying eyes on him for practically the first time, she saw no hesitation in the man. Her earlier thought was right: he held no fear. He possessed none of the feelings running through her, as if she were a factory creating them—her fear on an assembly line and pumping it out each minute, on the minute.
“Nicki!”
She shook her head, coming out of whatever trance the stranger had created. She kept staring at him over the sand, but remembered her father’s question.
“No,” she said. “Whatever I used, it’s gone now.”
And it was. She didn’t know how it had come, what it was, or when it had left. She only knew that the charge she felt previously was absent. She could sit here and dig inside herself, but she wouldn’t find anything.
“It’s gone,” she said again.
Do you miss it? a part of her whispered.
“Nicki, look in the sky. Where’s the sun at?” her father asked.
Nicki glanced across the horizon. “It’s … I don’t know. It’s not far into the sky yet.”
“Okay. Listen, I don’t know how often I’ll be able to come back like this, but we’re on the way, okay, Nicki? I promise. We’re coming to get you. Just do what they tell you until we can get there.”
Nicki whipped back around so that she faced her father, forgetting what he said about not being able to see her. “No! You’re not coming for me. Do not come looking for me, Dad.” She didn’t tell him why, because she didn’t want to scare him—not any more than he already was. The man behind her though, the one walking to get her … Nicki had seen a psychopath days ago, felt his hands around her neck, but even that didn’t make her feel the way this man did.
He was death personified. Elegant, but determined. Swift, but combined with brutality in a way that the psychopath never could be. She didn’t want her father around this man. She didn’t want him to ever lay eyes on death.
“We’re coming, Nicki,” her dad said as if he hadn’t heard a word. “I love you.”
“You have to go. Now,” she said. The man was only 20 feet away, and Nicki didn’t want her father here in any form when the man arrived.
The connection between her and Daniel ended as the stranger reached her.
Daniel’s eyes hadn’t been closed when speaking with his daughter, but he hadn’t seen anything of the room he occupied. For a moment, he’d seen the transport ablaze, and then only blackness for a while. It wasn’t until she was outside that he’d been able to see her again.
He felt the connection cut between them, almost like a physical cable. Something simply snipping it.
And then he was back in the basement with its brick walls and ancient machines.
He was surrounded by people, all staring at him as if he was some foreign animal from another Ministry. Something undiscovered and not seen before.
“It worked,” Dr. Lane said.
Daniel’s eyes found the only person he knew, the Pope. The man stood slightly behind the small circle of people who now congregated around Daniel, his white collar distinctive amidst their clothes.
“I talked to her,” Daniel said.
“We know. We heard.”
“Could you hear what she said?” Daniel asked.
The Pope shook his head. “Only your side. Did she tell you where the sun was?”
Daniel nodded, Nicki’s words still clear in his mind. Perhaps even clearer than they might have been if she’d been standing physically in front of him. Perhaps the connection, the one using the sight and these machines, was stronger than real life.
“She made it sound like daybreak happened a little while ago.”
“What about where she was, did she say anything else about it?” the Pope asked.
“Desert. That’s all that was around her. Only sand.”
The Pope turned from him and everyone else in the room. He faced the opposite wall and started walking slowly toward it.
“Where is she?” Daniel called, his hands flying up to the helmet. “Get this off me. Get it off!”
He heard
people moving behind him and then the helmet swung back up. The metal restraints over his legs opened and Daniel stood up, getting to his feet.
“Where is she?” he asked again.
“The High Priest has her,” the Pope said, though he spoke carefully as if considering each word. “The desert, though … Water separates the Old World from the True Faith. They call it Corinth’s Ocean, though of course it’s the Atlantic. They’re always trying to change the old ways, as if they can do that by simply saying it’s so.” The Pope shook his head for a second and looked at his feet. “Sorry. My mind is always wandering. The desert, though—if they were flying over that, it would mean they’re heading to the One Path. They’re over the Sahara Desert, and it sounds like they’re heading to the Indian Ocean. I just don’t know why.”
“It doesn’t matter why. As long as we know where they’re going, we can find them. Could they be doubling back, heading that way and then turning around to go back over the Atlantic?” Daniel asked.
“It’s possible.” The Pope looked up at the wall, stared for a second, then turned to his right and let his eyes fall to his feet. He started pacing slowly again. “It’s possible, but not likely. There isn’t time for those types of deception. No, I think they’re taking her to the One Path. The High Priest must be there, though I have no clue why he would be.”
“Then I’m going.”
The Pope shook his head though he didn’t stop walking. “No, you’re not. You’re staying here.”
“The hell I am,” Daniel said, his voice raising. “You can go fuck yourself if you think that even for a second.”
The room fell completely silent. Only the Pope’s footfalls made any noise as he reached the far wall, but he didn’t look up, only turned around and continued walking.
Daniel knew no one had spoken to this man like that, perhaps not in his whole life. No one in the room had any idea how to respond, most probably doubting Daniel would live past sundown.
He watched the Pope, his steps neither picking up speed nor losing it. Seconds passed and Daniel didn’t move, not sure what the Pope would do, but having meant every word.
