by Anna Mayle
* * * *
Jacobi lay there in a haze of blissed out wonderment. Enoch’s solid weight on top of him was perfect. Enoch’s arms were wrapped tightly around him, a hand on the nape of his neck and one on the small of his back. Those seemed to be Enoch’s cuddle points. Jacobi didn’t mind at all. His lover’s cock had started to soften, but had yet to slip out of him. They were connected, they were entwined. They shared a piece of each other, some divine spark. Nothing in either world could ever be so perfect as that moment.
Eventually, when his limbs felt less like jelly. Jacobi returned Enoch’s embrace and smiled. “I love you too.”
Enoch huffed against his neck. “I couldn’t tell.”
“You realize we’re going to have to move again.”
“Someday,” Enoch agreed.
The room went red and Cora’s ear piece beeped its warning.
“Or now,” both men agreed at once. They leapt from the bed.
Enoch reached for his neck and ported out.
Chapter Thirteen
When Enoch emerged from the lake, he couldn’t see anything amiss. He recovered his earpiece and batons and began a slow circuit around the camp. “Cora?”
No answer.
“Cora! Answer me,” Enoch demanded again, panic building.
“Cora is safe,” Jacobi reassured him. She has your goggles. I think she’s trying to tell us you told her not to talk. She keeps pointing out at you and covering her mouth.”
Enoch’s took a deep breath, then another, and another. He wanted to hug and throttle her at the same time.
His relief was cut short though, by the crunch of boots behind him. Enoch spun and dropped to one knee in case of an attack.
It brought him face to face with a child.
They stared at each other while Enoch listened for more movement, but there was nothing to hear.
The kid was a boy. His arms bent the wrong way at the elbow, the brow ridges over his eyes stood out prominently, his nose was only a pair of slits in the lower center of his face and his teeth were angled out, giving the impression of a maw instead of a jaw. An Angel child, and Angels did not leave their children alone.
Luckily fresh from the lake and without any of his coverings it was very obvious that Enoch was an Angel as well. Luckily the sun was only just rising and had a long while to go before it touched the bottom of the canyon, and his vulnerable skin. Enoch could only hope his luck would hold.
The boy reached out, touched his hairless head. He took Enoch’s hand and led him to retrieve his clothing and hood, then up the shallower of the inclined areas and out of the canyon all together. The entire edge of the canyon was surrounded by Angels and children. Some of the human children cowered, some stood unafraid beside the Angels, all of them stared at him.
A single elder Angel stood at Enoch’s approach. “They are dead. Our people.”
Enoch looked around himself tensely. If they wanted to fight, he and Cora didn’t stand a chance. He squared his shoulders and answered plainly. “Those who attack me and mine are dead. The people of these children?”
“Also dead,” the old one said calmly.
“And these children?” he asked warily.
The old Angel shook his head. “These children are not about death, they are about life.”
Enoch looked into the haunted faces of the cowering ones and shook his head. “Some of them are steeped in loss.”
“Life gives life,” the old one answered Enoch’s unstated comment. “They are being tested. To survive, they will have to be strong.”
Jacobi’s voice was a low growling in his ear. “How strong did she have to be to kill the pack of Angels that hurt her?”
The old Angel’s ears perked up and he pointedly stared at Enoch’s ear. “Very strong, just what we have sought. You, also, we have sought. It was unfortunate the pack who found you did not see who they had found.”
“And what did they find?” Enoch asked suspiciously.
“Salvation.”
He’d heard that before. “Yes, they said as much of the girl.”
“Then they gave the title to the wrong person. You, eternal one, you are to be the salvation. The plague is rising. The north has fallen to it already. We seek those young and strong enough to survive its fury, and a place for them to grow, and one to teach them.”
“To propagate the hate and suffering of this world, you take children from their homes, slaughter their people and hurt them horribly and expect them to grow up and be at peace with each other?”
“Yes. It is what they need to do, in order to survive.”
Enoch shook his head. “Then they won’t survive.”
“Their people had to be dealt with. They perpetuate hate and rash stereo types.”
“And eating their parents doesn’t.”
“The worst seeming of people can have the best of intentions.” The old one pointed out. “They will be allowed to grow amongst each other, without outside influence.”
Enoch frowned darkly. “I’ve read two stories about children raising each other. One ended in kidnapping other children to act as mothers, and one ended in death, lots of it. Children need a guardian.”
“That is why you will guide them.”
“I’m not that kind of Angel.”
The old one watched him with knowing eyes. “You are exactly that kind of Angel.”
Jacobi spoke up contemplatively, his voice barely a whisper. “You want hope, hope dwells in the hearts of the young. Enoch, their methods are wrong, but the philosophy might not be.”
Not able to hear the hacker, the old one continued. “The plague they have released will not take you. It will take us. It may take some children, but these ones are strong. Some will survive. And it won’t take you. Neither will time. You can stand with them and help the survivors through.”
“You can stop the plague though,” a child chirped behind him.
“Cora!” Enoch bellowed. “You were told to stay hidden.”
She looked up at him with kind and innocent eyes and took his hand in hers. “But they won’t hurt us. They’re good Angels, like you.”
Being compared, even unknowingly, to the people responsible for the deaths of her family made Enoch ill. For her sake, he fought the distaste back.
“You can stop it?” one of the younger Angels asked hopefully.
“I can’t save everyone.” Enoch warned.
“Can you save the children?” another Angel stepped forward.
He looked around at the tide of hopeful faces, down at Cora.
“Enoch,” Jacobi pressed. “It is humanity’s best chance. Look at the land around here, the Earth is reclaiming everything, the remnants of the Once World are crumbling under trees and rivers and moss. It wasn’t noticeable so much in the south, but even in Virginia…we could make a settlement here in the north. Live off the land and for the land. They could start healing the wounds of the past. You already have the schematics to power it, and with all of the files on the computer in Richmond…”
“I thought you didn’t even know those were there.”
“I had a lot of time—”
“While I drove and Cora slept, yes,” He sighed.
“We could make real go of it, not another Wall, not holding onto past comforts, but embracing the future. You were willing to teach Cora.”
Enoch didn’t feel like he needed to point out the difference between teaching one child and one hundred. If Jacobi wasn’t acknowledging it, he was intentionally overlooking it. Besides, there was something more pressing to address.
“When you mentioned the plague before, you said the plague they released.”
“Yes,” the old one nodded, “those who dug into the plague pits and spread their dust upon the wind.”
“Who?”
“The hackers,” a younger Angel accused.
“I did not!” Jacobi denied vehemently.
Enoch and Cora both chuckled, ignoring the strange looks of the people
around them.
“Jacobi,” Enoch soothed. “I don’t think you’re suspect in this.” To the Angels he asked, “Who is suspect? Surly you have more than the fact that they’re Angels to go on. “
“One is old, very old for a human,” the old one offered. “He has described humans as corpses who refuse to admit they are dead.”
“I’ve heard that before.” Jacobi mused.
Enoch glanced at the necks he was able to see. “Do any of you have ports? How do you know this?”
“The message was broadcast through every cam on Man’s Road, in the Walls too. We thought it was a bluff…then the dying started. The few of us with ports are not skilled in manipulation of the Network. We couldn’t find him.”
“Where have I heard that before?” Jacobi asked himself in Enoch’s ear.
“Can you save the children?” the Angel who’d asked before spoke up again.
Enoch thought of the doses he had prepared, the vials stashed away in the side compartment of his cyc along with his serum. He’d brought it all, just in case some of Cora’s people had survived, and to inoculate Jacobi.
Cora tugged at his hand and he glanced down at her earnest face. “I want to make the world again. There has to be people in it to make it back again.”
Enoch knelt beside her. “You realize you can’t make it completely the same?”
She nodded, “I can make it better. But a world still needs people in it.”
He would beg to differ, but with Jacobi’s pleas and Cora’s ringing in his ears…“Yes, I can probably save the children.”
Excited voices rose amongst the Angels, so many Enoch couldn’t pick on conversation out over another.
The voice in his ear spoke up suddenly. “I know!”
He raised one hand to cup his ear and here Jacobi over the din. “What?”
“I know where I heard that before, it was Skyler!”
“Skyler…” Enoch ran through all of the hackers he knew by name. “The guy on the Space Needle? The lore keeper?”
“What’s a Space Needle?” Jacobi and Cora asked in tandem.
“A building,” Enoch shook his head. “Skyler couldn’t dig up a plague pit. His body is failing him.”
Jacobi pointed out something Enoch really wished he hadn’t. “They said hackers, more than one of them.”
“Great.” He faced the mass of Angels before him. “I can’t port in with you.” Enoch might be willing to build ties with the group for the sake of Cora’s future, that didn’t mean he trusted them with her alone. Not yet, maybe not ever. “I have to give each of these kids the first of the injections, and then we should move north again, to a lake they can drink from.”
Jacobi agreed. “This time you can be the voice in my ear.”
Enoch didn’t like this plan. “Be careful.”
“I’m always careful!” Jacobi insisted.
Enoch really didn’t like this plan.
* * * *
It was simple to enter Skyler’s territory. Jacobi had done it a hundred times seeking the old man for one bit of information or another, or just a good debate. Security had been tweaked up but for someone who knew the base system so well, and after hacking Enoch’s security, it was barely noticeable. All it did was key him in to the fact that Skyler felt he would receive unwanted company.
“Did you find your answers?” the avatar before him asked, curious.
Jacobi nodded. “More than I was looking for.”
The seemingly young man licked his lips and smirked sadly. “So I take it this isn’t a social call.”
That threw him a bit. Skyler’s treachery hadn’t been what Jacobi had meant to refer to, but he let the unmeant challenge lay. It was as good an inlay to the conversation they needed to have as any. “Why?”
The other hacker motioned to the world he’d created for himself. “Look at this. I made this out of energy and my own mind. This is an imaginary world. I can make bots to be imaginary friends and I can see it, hear and feel and taste it.”
Jacobi nodded, confused. “That’s what this layer of the Network is.”
“It’s wrong, Jacobi. By perpetuating the Network and its use, we offer humanity an escape into the stuff dreams are made of. Why would they even try to make the real world better if this one is so much kinder, simpler, and easier? All they had to do was keep their bodies safe enough to port in and the rest…”
“So instead of pointing this out to them, trying to reason, you jumped right to genocide?”
Skyler shook his head and smiled. “Of course not. Not all of them will die. There were survivors the first time. There will be survivors now, and they will be stronger for it.”
In his ear, Enoch grumbled, “Why are all of the crazy people trying to change the world obsessed with strength?”
“Humanity,” Skyler continued, unaware of Enoch’s presence, “is strongest after a crisis. Look at what they did after the war and the first plague. The survivors banded together and remade the face of this nation! They put up the Walls, Man’s Road, Communication and trade routes. They strove for greatness and persevered. Now they languish in their accomplishments of hundreds of years ago while they rust and crumble around them.”
“So you thought they needed a new crisis? That’s insane!” Jacobi accused, thinking of all of the lives wasted.
“I might have thought the same, Jacobi,” Enoch pointed out plainly. “If I had believed humanity to be worth the effort.”
“What is with this habit you smart people have of saying dumb things?”
“It isn’t an unintelligent leap.” Enoch responded.
“There is nothing dumb about it,” Skyler pressed. “Everything in life goes in cycles and transformations. Humanity is ready for its next step, but to get there it must emerge from its chrysalis and learn to be what it has become. If not, it will only die and rot. I am not the only man who thinks these things.”
“Just because there’re people willing to give in to your delusion doesn’t mean you have a valid argument, it means you have a cult,” Jacobi pushed. “You aren’t long for this word anyway. In fact, because of your age, the plague will likely take you. Why?”
“Every man wishes to leave a legacy, leave a mark on the world.”
“Well, he did that,” Enoch growled.
Jacobi sighed, “And the others who helped you?”
Skyler shook his head sadly, “They infected themselves to visit the Walls and travel Man’s Road, all to spread the plague.”
“The Walls are all locked down. They can’t get in,” Jacobi happily denied him.
Skyler wasn’t so easily deterred. “If they think they’re safe in their Walls, just wait. They have to breathe. They have to bring in air,” he explained as if to a child. “It won’t show up as quickly, they aren’t malnourished and exhausted as the people in the Waste, so it will happen slowly, sneak up just when they think they’ve beaten the outbreak. The carriers will keep traveling, spreading the plague until it takes them, and it will. We knew it would happen when we made our plans. It’s our sacrifice.”
“These are just the ravings of a lunatic, Jacobi.” Enoch soothed. “We can still hunt down the carriers and stop the spread. This isn’t the end.”
The man didn’t look mad, wasn’t foaming at the mouth or ranting. He stood before Jacobi, calmly excusing the mass of death and heartache he and his people had and would cause. No, not even excusing it, explaining it! The conversation made Jacobi nauseous.
“Are you infected?”
“No,” Skyler walked to the edge of his perch and looked down onto the carefully programed destruction and growth below. “I don’t have long though. Don’t you see, Jacobi? It’s just like the Network. Corrupted data needs to be removed in order to build.”
“You aren’t talking about data,” Jacobi insisted. “You’re talking about people, thousands of them.”
“And their deaths will purchase the future.” Skyler smiled. “And I thank them for it.”
/> “Skyler,” Jacobi shook his head.
“Why did you come, kid? It’s not like anything we’ve set in motion can be undone.”
“There is always something that can be done.”
Skyler shook his head, likely thinking Jacobi an optimistic fool. “So why are you still here?”
Jacobi stared at him, “Because I considered you a friend, once. And I needed to understand your motivations, but I don’t.”
The old man’s young avatar smiled at him, turned to face him fully. “That’s because you are a good man, Jacobi. And good men never do what’s needed.” Then he stepped backward and plummeted down.
“Skyler!” Jacobi ran to the edge, reached out, but Skyler hung in the air, frozen part way with a serene smile on his face.
“Jacobi? Jacobi! What happened?” Enoch sounded frantic.
Jacobi watched his old friend, heart heavy and tears dripping. “His physical body must have given out while we were talking. He’s dead.” The avatar phased out. “Wherever he is, Skyler is dead.”
“Jacobi?” Enoch asked softly in his ear.
“He wasn’t a bad person.”
“Life is rarely so simple as black and white. A hacker taught me the truth of that.”
Jacobi wiped his eyes and bowed his head. “A hacker, huh? Is that what I am?”
“Come home, Jacobi,” Enoch bade him. “What’s done is done. You can’t change that, but you can make things better.”
Jacobi gave a wet sounding chuckle and wiped his eyes again. “You just want me to help with the children.”
Enoch scoffed. “Did you see how many there are?”
“What do you call a group of children?” Jacobi wondered while he stepped out of Skyler’s domain and back into his room. “A flock? A gaggle?”
Enoch growled and Jacobi heard children complaining in the background while Cora tried to explain why the needle wouldn’t hurt for long. “A pain in the ass.”
“Well, in Nomans, you said you were used to pain.” He giggled.
“Your pity is astounding.”
“Put on your goggles,” Jacobi ordered. “Or get that done quickly and port in. Cora will be fine. They’re good Angels…sort of. It’s that whole black and white thing again.” He was not about to mention that he just really, really needed a hug. He couldn’t seem to stop crying.
