Vessel, Book I: The Advent

by Tominda Adkins

  * * * * *

  While I sobbed nauseously and awaited death, the boys were feasting on breakfast burritos in the fresh morning air.

  They sat on a dry patch of asphalt, passing around packets of hot sauce in the most inconspicuous place imaginable: the far end of a Wal-Mart parking lot, waiting for the helicopter that Stella had arranged. In addition to a quick zip through one auspiciously placed Mexican drive-thru, the ambulance had made one other stop along the way―it had paused at the top of the bridge to pick up a final passenger.

  Abraham Sharma had been in absolute heaven ever since.

  The Vessel, in the flesh. Walking, talking, chewing chorizo. It was a Luna Latum biochemist's wet dream, and you couldn't have pinched him awake with a pair of pliers.

  The feeling was overwhelmingly mutual. To the Vessel, who had spent the past thirty-six hours just trying to figure out what continent they should be on, Abe was a veritable Book of Answers on tape, read by an informed man with a pleasant, East Indian accent. To them, he knew everything.

  "The Elysium is actually a small island."

  "At some point during the Black Plague, the Luna Latum was down to twelve members."

  "Hollows prefer polyester."

  "Agent Rosin is Swedish."

  They listened as if he were the Messiah.

  "You're lucky," Abe interrupted one of his own tangents, an explanation of the modified antibiotics he was currently swabbing Corin's massacred arm with. "I examined these Hollows myself. They were very young, not even finished with the change, or else your arm would've fallen off by now."

  Corin watched with the stoic thoughtfulness of a medical intern, clenching his jaw as the solution was swabbed through troughs of torn skin. The others listened intently, but were doing their best not to look. They were still eating, after all.

  "Of course," Abe continued, "it's probable that the five of you react to a Hollow's touch differently than average people. But I'd still wager that if they'd been older, or more potent, then you wouldn't have lasted an hour without this stuff."

  By potent, as they understood it, Abe was referring to the degree of separation from death's wellspring, or how many breaths down the family tree an individual Hollow was from Dahrkren. As far as Hollows go, that's the difference between making someone's arm rot off slowly just by biting it―or being able to rip an entire crowd of people limb-from-limb in seconds without lifting a finger.

  "So it's an antibiotic, then?" Corin navigated back to the previous train of thought, and Abe nodded.

  "An antibiotic, yes, with a divine kick. Chemically, it's almost identical to the type used to treat recluse spider bites. Same principal." The older man cracked open another tube of the stuff and continued working with steady, accomplished hands as he explained.

  "That black matter you saw, that's the real trouble. Think of it physically, like an acid, or a topical poison. It'll start killing tissue wherever it touches you―skin, fat, muscle, whatever it can get to. Technically speaking, all that damage will cause your blood to clot up, which eventually leads to renal failure and ultimately, to death. And the older the Hollow is, the faster it feeds, the less time you have.

  "Now if a Hollow breathes into you, as opposed to merely touching you, it does quite the same thing. The only difference is that the death matter simultaneously regenerates what it's destroying. And so instead of dying, your body becomes another Hollow. The process never really ends. It slowly breaks down everything organic and recreates the victim in its own image―or recreates itself in the image of the victim, to be more precise.

  "So a Hollow may look human, because that's just the easiest and most discreet form to assume, but some of the older ones don't have a drop of blood or an ounce of bone left in them. That's why they drink blood so often, or eat living tissue, because that's what it exists to do―consume anything living." Abe shrugged. "Once it's done with a whole body it'll still want more."

  Ghi swallowed a lump of what was quickly becoming an unappetizing taco. "But what is it? That black stuff?" He wiggled his fingers like tentacles. There was a fleck of hot sauce on his chin. Mild.

  Abe's brow lifted. His surprise at the very question was enough to move his spectacles down his nose a full inch. He adjusted them before producing a roll of standard first-aid bandages.

  "The very thing you are here to confront," he said, winding the dressings firmly around Corin's arm. "It's death. Just death. In whatever language―too tight?"

  "No."

  "Right. Well, on its own plane of existence, we don't know what form it takes," Abe explained. "But in ours, it operates in a purely symbolic manner. There's nothing physical about it, you understand. Even the Breath. The act itself is just a symbol, but it plays out on death's terms. Nothing about the force of death is constrained by our laws. That's why its manifestations can change and move so illogically, why we can't eliminate it. There are ways to ground it, or contain it, but the best we can do is simply store Hollows away to keep them from multiplying. Which is why we need you all. You five can eliminate them. You're foolproof."

  At that moment, a pair of police cruisers tore by on the distant highway, sirens blaring, doubtless on their way to the bridge and the empty wreckage below. It would have been an opportune time to further discuss the false report being planned for the authorities, had Khan not bolted to his feet at the sound and taken off running. The others watched him sprint across the lot, cringing collectively as he neared a moat-like drainage ditch at its edge, which he promptly fell into.

  "Foolproof," Corin reiterated.

  "I'll get him," Jackson sighed. He hastily wrapped what was left of his fourth burrito before trotting off.

  The driver's side door of the ambulance swung open, and Stella emerged, satellite phone held firmly to one ear. "What's going on out here?" she demanded crossly.

  Corin waved his neatly bandaged arm in an assuring gesture. "It's all under control," he said, at about the time Jackson geronimoed into the ditch and disappeared.

  Stella stepped down to the asphalt to make a better assessment, at which point Jesse paused the preening of his cuticles to look at her, his eyes glossed attractively with cartoon puppy hope.

  "Any news? Did they find her?" he asked.

  Stella ignored him. Her eyes stayed on the drainage ditch and her ear stayed against the phone.

  Jesse scoffed. He leaned back on his elbows, coming as close as he could to lying down without allowing his hair to touch asphalt, and looked sideways at Abe.

  "Does everyone at the Luna Latum have such a stick up their ass?"

  Abe cleared his throat loudly enough to drown that out.

  "Hunters are not quite the ... eh ... the norm within the Luna Latum," he answered with polite caution. "Subduing Hollows―well, you can imagine it's a very unpredictable, dangerous job. Quite stressful, really. So hunters can sometimes come off as a little ...."

  He paused when Stella sliced a glance in his direction.

  "Assy?" Jesse supplemented.

  Ghi rescued them both with another question. He was carefully picking the cheese out of his third taco. "What happens to the Hollows? Once the hunters have ... um ... dealt with them?"

  "Well," Abe said, rubbing smudges off his bifocals, "they go to a secure facility for storage. And for study―to create that antibiotic, for example, or to devise ways to prevent their communication." There was a smile in his voice, but a distant discomfort as well. "That sort of work is originally what the Luna Latum had in mind for me, but it just wasn't my style. I requested a change of departments, and, well, here I am."

  Corin furrowed his eyebrows. This, I have long come to recognize, meant that a very sensible and appropriate question was about to be asked.

  "How did you find the Luna Latum in the first place?" he asked, sensibly and appropriately. "How did you even know they existed?"

  They all paused when a wave of intense heat brushed by, immediately followed by Jackson shouting choice words from the d
rainage ditch, unseen beyond the smoke and dust whirling up from therein. Abe was so mesmerized by this that when he turned back to Corin, he had completely forgotten the question.

  "The Luna Latum," Corin repeated himself patiently. "How did you find them?"

  "Oh!" Abe laughed abruptly. "Oh, that's a good one. The Luna Latum found me. They always find the people they want."

  Corin did not find this nearly as funny as Abe did. He and Ghi exchanged looks of nearly equal unease, clearly reaching the same conclusion. Jesse's attention span had timed out minutes ago. He was back to the cuticles again.

  "They're really very good with all the arrangements," Abe assured them. "Everyone thinks that I left the Human Genome Project to work on my own influenza vaccine. It's never been an issue. Mother still hears from me on holidays."

  Ghi's nerves failed him. He applied too much sudden force to a packet of hot sauce, and some of it came fatally close to hitting Jesse's shoes. Armani.

  "You mean they abducted you?" he asked.

  Abe shrugged.

  "You might say that the Luna Latum found my expertise crucial to their cause," he said, in a careful but giddy attempt at modesty. His expression was coy, bashful at best. Apparently, getting kidnapped and forced to do paranormal experiments for a clandestine organization was considered a high honor among men of science. Or at least men like Abe.

  "I mean," he blathered on humbly, "Dr. Ivor would have probably been a better fit, but he had all those children. And Mechtild was a total alcoholic. Not that you heard it from me―"

  Corin stared at him, wide-eyed. "You've never tried to escape?"

  Abe blinked at him as if waiting for a punch line, and then laughed despite the absence of one. "Are you kidding?"

  Heavy coughing interrupted them. Jackson had emerged from the ditch―sooty, but otherwise unmaimed―with Khan just behind him, smoldering. Visibly. Literally. As in a small fire had broken out across his shoulders.

  "You have to learn to calm down, man," Jackson coached as they walked back together. "Take it easy. Imagine yourself in a meadow or some shit. Lord."

  As he said this, Abe was already rushing over to examine this divine fire himself, eager to see it up close. Khan, perturbed by the sudden invasion of space, faked at Abe with Rottweiler malice, baring his teeth. An arch of flame lashed out, igniting Abe's sleeve.

  The doctor laughed an awestruck, thrilled laugh and slapped at the spreading flames with his own hand, looking back to Corin and Ghi with resolute delight.

  "Why would I want to be doing anything else?"

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