Merciless

by Robin Parrish

Father Bernard smiled. "Yes. Quite the paradox, is it not? You have stumbled upon one of the great mysteries that theologians and scholars have wrestled with for centuries. But I believe the answer lies in the book of Romans-chapter six, verse twenty-three." He waited, watching the boy, knowing his keen mind could very likely call up the passage from memory.

  Simon's shoulders settled. He had an aha! look on his face. "'The wages of sin is death,"' he quoted.

  Father Bernard nodded. "Whether or not any of these peoples died at the very hands of God himself, the important thing to remember is that they were all wicked, deceitful, depraved people. Do you understand?"

  "So they deserved to die? And their wickedness made it okay for God's people to murder them?"

  Father Bernard tilted his head to one side in thought, and then shrugged. "Far worse than their mortal death was the eternal punishment they received after death. And that fate would have awaited them regardless of how and when they met it, because they were unrepentant. It doesn't matter if we agree with their deaths at the hands of the great patriarchs of our faith; it was a different age, subjected to a different way of life. What matters is that they were deemed unrighteous in God's sight."

  The lesson ended; Father Bernard went home for the day and thought no more of the conversation he'd had with Simon. Late that night, he received a telephone call from the school's administrator, who informed him that one of the girls sitting in the back of his classroom that day had accused him of inappropriately touching her.

  An investigation was launched, and Father Bernard was placed on administrative leave. He was sure he would be cleared of the charges, but the girl who'd accused him had prepared her story too perfectly, and it was eagerly verified by several of her friends. Even his best students looked at him differently when he came in to speak to the administrator. No one volunteered to speak up in his defense.

  He was never convicted of any crime, but the damage was done. Despite his innocence, he swiftly lost his job, and his rights and title as a priest were revoked.

  Nineteen Years Ago

  In a small city in northern England, over two hours away from his previous home, Bernard resettled and tried to find some peace in his life. His kindhearted brother, Frederick, had been good enough to offer him a job, believing that the charges against him had been fabricated.

  Bernard served as the manager of the meager office supply company owned by his brother. The hours were long and the work was far from thrilling, but he liked the people he was working with, and he smiled and laughed with them often. And no one here knew anything of his past or the false charges that had ruined his career.

  One spring morning he was recounting a funny story to his employees when two police officers arrived at the office.

  "Yes, can I help you?" he asked the approaching officers.

  "Please turn around and place your hands behind your back, sir," one of them ordered. "You're under arrest for defrauding your tax filings for the last five years. We have evidence linking your office to the laundering of more than fifty million pounds."

  Bernard pleaded with them, certain it was a mistake. He had always kept spotless records and was strict about ensuring that his employees did the same.

  A few days later, word reached Bernard's ears inside jail that his brother had unexpectedly left the country in a rush, leaving no forwarding information or reason to believe he would ever return.

  Bernard fell physically ill upon hearing this news. He remained silent and inconsolable at the trial, where he was sentenced to an eighteen-year prison term with a possibility of parole after eleven years.

  Seven months would pass before he would receive the news that Frederick had been found in the United States; his brother was found dead, and with him the only soul who knew of Bernard's innocence.

  Twelve Years Ago

  Bernard tossed and turned in his cot, unwilling to wake up.

  What was the point? There was nothing to look forward to, here behind these bars. And the prospect of leaving prison in a few years left him just as cold and empty inside as staying here for so long had.

  Knowing the warden would be by any minute to rouse him for the morning meal if he wasn't up and ready in timeand knowing the warden wasn't famous for his gentility and charm-he opened his eyes. And gasped.

  Bernard wasn't in his prison cell. He was in a stylish bachelor's bedroom, all twisted up beneath fine bed linens. What was going on here? It had to be a dream.

  Quickly disentangling himself from the sheets, he got up and ran to a bright window next to the bed to look outside. He was on the second story of a quaint apartment building; oldfashioned shops lined the street below. It was a part of town he couldn't recognize.

  What was happening?

  He felt a lurch in his stomach, like he might vomit, and ran out of the bedroom to find a bathroom. It was right across the hall, but instead of throwing up, he froze when his body filled the frame of a large oval mirror over the sink.

  His appearance had changed. His whole body had changed. He'd slept in pajamas his entire life, but the man staring back at him wore only a pair of shorts. The physique of this man was stunning: Toned, chiseled muscles covered his entire body. Shrewd eyes were set deep within a bald head. An expensivelooking gold ring sat upon his right middle finger.

  And in a blink, though he had no idea how it had happened, Bernard embraced this new life that had been miraculously given to him, as if his years as a priest and in prison had all been a bad dream and his life had truly begun at last.

  He was free; he had a different identity, a new name, and nothing to tie him to his past. He could never be sent back to jail, and there were no records to connect him to the unjust events at the high school, so long ago. It was a miracle.

  A second start. Everything was a new discovery, and he found endless reasons to appreciate each arriving day. What had happened to him was enough to make him believe that maybe there was someone still up there watching out for him after all, and maybe, just maybe, there were still some good people left in this world.

  Nine Years Ago

  In a hospital bed in France, Payton awoke. His body was in considerable pain, but his first thought rested on one thing only: Where's Morgan? He tried to sit up, his heart filling with fear...

  "Calm down, friend," said the older gentleman standing with his hands clasped at the foot of the bed. "You were in an accident. A cave-in. Your heart even stopped for a few minutes, but they revived you."

  "Morgan!" Payton's dry, raspy voice tried to shout. "What happened to Morgan?"

  "You were found alone," the man replied.

  Payton sank back onto the bed, not believing these words. She wouldn't have left him. She wouldn't.

  She loved him. Just as much as he loved her.

  She did, she had to.

  "No, you don't understand," he said to the man, sitting upright again, ignoring the pain. "We must go back and find her; she must've been trapped in the cave-in-"

  "A thorough search of the cave has been conducted, and there was no one else found. You were alone," he repeated.

  Impossible. She was the only thing he'd ever really loved. She was his reason for living ...

  The thought turned his blood cold.

  Payton was not asleep when the alarm sounded. He was unmoving, yet wide awake, in a small foldout cot, his mind racing from thought to thought-from Morgan to Oblivion and everything in between. Mostly his thoughts lingered on Oblivion, about the exact number of pieces he would cut him into ...

  Hearing the alarm, he vanished from his cot and unsheathed his sword to hold it underhanded, sprinting at superspeed for a small alcove of video screens near the front door. There were no windows in the building looking out, but he had a top-of-the-line security system that showed views pointed in all directions from the outside of the building.

  Payton had been concerned about this since his and Alex's escape from Oblivion's thrall. Oblivion might not be able to control them anymore, b
ut could he still sense them, could he see their location? Grant had always been able to. If so, then Payton had expected Oblivion to send someone after them, or even come after them himself-and he'd expected it to happen long before now. It wasn't like Big Evil to delay gratification. This was the one trait Payton respected about Oblivion, because they shared it in common.

  Daniel and Lisa appeared, running toward the security alcove. Soon they stood next to Payton, both of them out of breath.

  "What is it?" Lisa asked.

  "Who is it?" Daniel asked.

  The old man rounded a corner from a room behind the kitchen: the armory. He carried a Beretta 92 in his hand, and he popped the clip in by slapping the gun's handle against his hip. He strode toward them, cold and focused, eyes on the front door. He chambered the pistol's first round by grasping the slide with his teeth and pushing the gun sideways across his mouth. Ready, he took up position on the other side of the door, pointing his weapon at the door and glancing at Payton.

  Payton leaned in to examine one of the monitors closely, and frowned. There were two people standing on the other side of the door at the top of the small exterior stairway. The weather outside had turned on them again, and it was raining blood once more, which was messing with the monitors' system. The images were grainy and distorted, and the rain had quickly become a downpour, making it nearly impossible to make out the visitors' faces.

  "Huh," Lisa commented, tilting her head to one side and squinting. "It kinda looks like they're trying to ring the doorbell."

  "There is no doorbell," Payton replied.

  Lisa glared at him. "I know ... I'm just saying. .

  "Do we run?" Daniel considered, looking behind them and up to where Alex lay, still sleeping.

  "Run where?" Payton replied, and in a flash he was standing beside the front door, opposite the old man, sword still held reversed in only one hand.

  Daniel and Lisa ducked down behind the row of monitors and watched as Payton placed his hand on the door's metal handle. With practiced lethality, he flung open the door, grabbed the first man and threw him on the floor inside. Continuing his momentum from his initial movement, he whacked the second man in the face with the blunt end of the sword, and then grabbed the man's shirt lapels and shoved him up against the wall just beside the door. He swung around with one foot and kicked the man on the floor in the side of the head while pressing the edge of the sword against the standing man's throat.

  The old man stepped out and covered the guy on the ground with his pistol.

  "Wait, wait!" shouted the man on the floor, throwing up a hand. "It's me!"

  "You know this man who's about to get shot?" the man pinned against the wall said, his throat vibrating against the blade. Payton looked down and saw that a glistening black pistol was being held just shy of touching his chest.

  Not bad, Payton had to admit. He hadn't seen this man draw his weapon.

  "You're sure these are the good guys?" the gunman asked.

  "Last time I saw them they were," Ethan replied, rubbing the side of his head, a lump already rising where Payton had punched him.

  Payton turned loose of the man up against the wall but didn't offer to help Ethan up. "What are you doing here?" he asked darkly.

  "How in the world did you find us?" Daniel echoed, emerging from behind the security alcove, Lisa in tow.

  Ethan looked down and saw that Daniel was scratching the red welt on the back of his hand. "Sorry about the rash on your hand," he said. "That's my doing. When we parted ways in London, do you remember when we shook hands? I tagged the back of your hand with a subdermal tracking device. Don't worry-it's advanced tech, untraceable to anyone who doesn't know the frequency." At this, he held up a small device like a palmtop computer, which showed a rudimentary map; a blinking blue dot indicated the source of the signal. "Knew I'd never find you again without help."

  Payton was unimpressed. Daniel seemed to be taking a moment to process this.

  "Who's the new guy?" Lisa asked, sizing up Ethan's new companion.

  "Sergeant Paul Tucker, ma'am," said the man against the wall, who was rubbing his throat now that Payton had released him. He holstered his weapon.

  "Who's your new friend?" Ethan asked, noting the old man, who had lowered his gun as well.

  But Payton focused solely on Ethan, closing the outside door and sheathing his sword. "What happened to you in London? You disappeared."

  It took Ethan a minute to catch up with Payton's question; he was thinking of his last experiences in London, with Daniel and Lisa and Trevor. Payton was talking about a time several days earlier, before Grant had died, before any of the most recent events-including the extraordinary changes in Ethan's life-had occurred.

  "I got a new employer," Ethan replied. "It's kind of a long story."

  Payton crossed his arms. "Dying to hear it."

  "Me too," called out a weak voice.

  They all turned. A very pale Alex was standing at the edge of the upstairs sleeping quarters, an IV on wheels attached to her arm. She was clutching the metal railing on the second floor and looking down at Ethan with a mixture of curiosity and deliriousness.

  She swayed dangerously, and as one, all six individuals on the ground floor made for the stairs.

  It was a tight space in the upstairs sleeping quarters, but the seven of them found places to sit, even if it was on the floor.

  Payton was the first to reach Alex, catching her before she collapsed completely. He promptly escorted her back to bed before she was reprimanded by just about everyone for getting up in the first place. But their chiding was softened by their amazement in seeing her moving at all. It was the most coherent and awake she'd been since arriving here.

  The condition upon which she agreed to go back to bed was that Ethan would tell his tale where she could hear it. So they all remained upstairs with her, much to her satisfaction.

  Her fevered nightmares had been twisted re-creations of her time under Oblivion's thrall, reliving the physical pain and emotional anguish and the terrible loneliness of it all ... To exist in the midst of so many people, yet be completely helpless.

  Thankfully awake now, she decided that she didn't want to be alone ever again.

  "That was a very emotional night for us all," Ethan began his story. "Grant and Alex had just escaped from the secret room beneath the London Library, and the rest of you were hit with the news that Morgan had died. We gathered in the attic loft of your British counterparts. Tensions were running high as I recall ... Grant and Nora exchanged some heated words-"

  "I'll cut your insides out," Payton's gravelly voice intoned, "if you don't get on with it."

  Ethan cleared his throat nervously. Alex looked closer at Payton from where she reclined on her bed. He looked much as she remembered him, pre-Oblivion. He was nearly back to perfect physical condition and his personality-or lack thereofwas stronger than ever. But she perceived something new in his face. He concealed it well, but she saw flashes of it at times when his patience was put to the test.

  His practiced composure was cracking. The caged animal they knew waited below the surface seemed closer than ever and was doing all it could to get out.

  "Well," Ethan continued, "I left the attic and walked into the arms of the British authorities. They'd been tracking me for a while, but thankfully I was far enough away from the loft when they found me that they didn't trace me all the way back there. The FBI had issued a warrant for my arrest."

  "Why?" Payton asked.

  "Mostly for ticking off my supervisor. She was ... well, she was kind of ... charm-free." He glanced up at Payton, whose hard expression did not change one tic.

  "Anyway," Ethan went on, "to make a long story not so long, I was taken into custody, and that's where they found me."

  "Where who found you?" Alex asked.

  "'The Appointed.' That's what they call themselves. They're sort of a rogue security agency, answerable to no government, operating outside of the law. They bel
ieve they're doing nothing less than the work of God himself. I don't know everything about them, but they told me they've been around for centuries, and their primary mandate was to undermine the work of the Secretum of Six in bringing about the coming of Oblivion."

  "Umm . . ." Lisa raised her hand cautiously.

  Everyone faced her.

  "I don't buy it."

  "Buy what?" Ethan asked.

  "These Appointed people. That they've been around for hundreds of years, fighting against the Secretum. I mean, if it's true ... then they've done a bang-up job!"

  Ethan smirked.

  "No, seriously. They have one task and they failed miserably. And they certainly haven't tried to help the rest of us. Just exactly where have they been?" Lisa was shouting now. "Where were they when Daniel and I were stuck in a British jail and nearly killed? Where were they when the Loci were strung up like puppets for Oblivion to control? Where were they when Grant died, or when Morgan died, or Julie? Where were they when the Loci were Shifted and given Rings? I'm sorry, but I don't know how you can believe any of this."

  Alex looked back at Ethan, who was taking in the expectant gazes of the entire group. She almost felt sorry for him, having to rationalize the difficult choices he'd obviously had to make.

  "As it was explained to me," he said slowly, "the Appointed have intentionally limited their numbers and resources over the centuries so as not to alert the Secretum to their existence. There are only about a hundred of them in the whole world. And they move very cautiously, with great deliberation, because the fact that the Secretum doesn't know they exist is their one advantage."

  "Why you?" Payton asked, his dangerous voice somehow making every statement feel like a threat.

  "Excuse me?"

  Payton leaned in a bit closer. "Why did they recruit you?"

  Ethan hesitated. "While I'd like to think it was my FBI training, or perhaps my boyish good looks and boundless enthusiasm ... honestly, I have no idea," he sighed. "But I'd barely met a handful of them at some sort of local meeting place in London when they sent me to Antalya on an observation assignment. I was to infiltrate the Secretum's underground city-which they knew how to find and breach, though I don't know how-on the off chance that Grant might turn up there."