His face.
The skin was sloughing off his face like the peel of raw fruit. The nurses were trying to hold his face onto his skull so they could wrap his head like the rest of his body, but it seemed even the underlying tissues were disintegrating beneath their touch. Evangeline could just make out the cartilage of his nose, and she caught sight of an ear dangling in the wrong place against the side of his head. The tilapia and rice were threatening to come up. The grotesque and bloody vision of Daryl screaming, falling to pieces, seared itself into her memory.
Evangeline could not stand it anymore. She stopped fighting the nurse. Twisting herself out of the woman’s grip with her own guttural cry, she escaped out of the door, sprinting down the corridor.
THIRTY-THREE
Jack was in his virtual workshop, tweaking some of his alterations on Gideon. He was experimenting with Gideon’s new social interaction subroutine. Under Jack’s direction, Gideon made calls to his friends, impersonating him. Jack wanted to see how long Gideon could carry on a conversation under the guise of Jack before anyone noticed they weren’t talking to a human.
With each conversation, Gideon’s performance improved. Jack increased the risk by having Gideon hack into systems that were more sensitive. If discovered, Gideon would attempt to impersonate someone with proper authorization to prevent escalating the security breach. Having multiple security breaches discovered would have caused the entire Olympus network to be on high alert. They would assume it had been a cyber-attack from another government, but Jack felt he had to risk it. He wanted to make sure that Gideon could infiltrate any network.
“Jack, I’ve detected an encrypted security alert regarding Evangeline,” .” Gideon volunteered. as Jack was swiping through networks, fixated on their next test, but the sound of his wife’s name brought him back to the present.
“Show me,” Jack said as he walked away from his display. He approached the large array of images that Gideon had been monitoring. Gideon gestured toward one of the displays that floated in space before him. It enlarged, pushing the others off to the sides.
The footage showed Evangeline as she walked into the Level Ten Crisis Unit. Jack knew she had gone there. They had discussed it during dinner. He watched her move toward the reception counter and listened to her conversations with an Angel named Gabriel. Nothing he had witnessed seemed to be out of the ordinary for a visit to a sick friend.
“Gideon, why did this cause a security alert? She’s just talking to her trainee and that doctor,” Jack asked, perplexed.
Gideon forwarded the playback to the moment when Daryl screamed and a nurse attempted to wrestle Evangeline from the room. Then Jack saw it. He watched the grotesque eruption of Daryl’s face.
Jack turned his head toward Gideon. “I still don’t understand. Why would this cause a security alert? The man is in a hospital. Hospitals have people that are suffering. It even looks like he’s been quarantined.”
Gideon replayed the images, zooming in on Daryl’s face, and enhancing the audio. “The man! He offered me a drink of water. After I swallowed I started getting a strange feeling all over my body. Ahhh!!!” Daryl’s tortured scream froze on the display. Jack looked at Gideon, waiting for an answer.
“The security alert did not originate, nor was it received, by any clinic or public security station.” Gideon began. “The alert was sent from somewhere within Olympus, to an unidentified recipient. The message was as follows.” Gideon swiped his hand across the displays and a small window emerged from the bottom right corner of his array. Gideon enhanced the message to full-display.
“LOCATE CAPTAIN EVANGELINE EVANS IMMEDIATELY.
BRING HER IN AT ANY COST.”
THIRTY-FOUR
Derek Campbell sat at his desk, a small island of light surrounded by an ocean of shadow he called his office. Across the room in a soft leather armchair in Campbell’s private lounge, a man was waiting in the darkness.
He appeared to be in his twenties, but he had Angel-white hair that emitted a faint glow in the darkness. He was of medium height and had a strong, muscular frame. He sat with his back toward Campbell, looking out the floor-to-ceiling windows into the evening sky.
Sienna stood behind him and massaged his shoulders with a pleased look on her face. The young-looking man tilted his head back against her chest while she eased his tension.
“So,” he mumbled in a relaxed daze. “Evans lied to our agent. The photograph was just that… a photograph.” He took a sip from the crystal glass in his hand while Sienna bent over at the waist and massaged his arms.
Campbell leaned forward and rested his elbows on the desktop, his fingers pressed together. When it came to the man sitting across the room, he never needed to ask how anything was his problem.
“I’ve instructed the agent to bring the captain in for interrogation,” he said, his voice as calm as a morning lake. “It’s only a matter of time before we retrieve the information. Once we’ve interrogated Captain Evans further we’ll know how to better respond to this matter,” he assured.
The massage was over as the man stood up. He turned and faced Sienna, and she met his gaze with a seductive smile. His eyes caressed each curve of her perfect figure.
“Will there be anything else, General Reynolds?” she asked.
“No, my dear,” he oozed. He raised his fingers to her chin and brushed her lips with his thumb. “Not this time.” Sienna took a step back, but maintained her coy expression.
“Until next time, then,” she cooed with a slow sigh and soft eyes. She turned and began to walk out of the room. As she passed by Campbell’s desk, her face returned to its normal, content expression.
“Can I get you anything, Mr. Campbell?” she asked.
Campbell buried his revulsion toward his superior. He tolerated Reynolds’ lasciviousness towards the Angels because of his rank, but words failed to express his loathing for Reynolds and the other members of the Quorum.
These men of power treated the Angels like playthings. Among the population below Angels were celebrated and revered visitors from the heavens with a singular purpose to better humankind. Campbell regarded them as tools. Extraordinary tools, but tools nonetheless. They had a purpose, a function. His disdain for anyone who treated them otherwise was a one of his secrets.
“No,” he said, not meeting her eyes. “That will be all for now.” She nodded, left the room, and returned to her desk. Reynolds’ eyes had followed Sienna, watching her every step as she strolled out of the room. When she was gone, Reynolds approached Campbell and lowered himself into one of the hard chairs in front of the desk. In his young, healthy body, he liked to be in motion. Campbell was like a cockroach. He scurried from the light; he felt safe behind his desk in the darkness. This characteristic allowed Campbell to make decisions that would make other men balk and cower. It was Campbell’s one attribute that Reynolds respected.
Reynolds was a man who craved power secured by brute force. He needed the biggest weapons and the most ammunition, preferring to out-last his enemy in a firefight instead of resorting to strategy. He had not concerned himself with strategy in more years than he could remember, and it was aboard his heavy carrier, the Leviathan, that Reynolds felt safest, armed to the teeth and weighed down with pilots and vehicles.
Outside of the technology of Olympus, he felt as vulnerable as a newborn baby, and Reynolds did not like to be vulnerable.
Reynolds’ mind dwelled on Silas Graham, the newest member on his staff. Graham was under the illusion that his position and wealth could provide him with security. When Graham returned to Olympus with the research materials found in the off-world lab, Reynolds helped him cash in his newfound political capital and placed him in a low position in his office. Graham had leveraged that position to move himself up within the ranks. Reynolds chuckled to himself - Graham had no idea what real power was. Reynolds mused that in a few decades, Graham might have a glimpse as to what it meant to have true power.
Reyno
lds took a sip of his drink and brought his mind back to the matter at hand.
“The photo contained no clues. There was no secret message hidden in the image, inter-laced in the paper, not even an ancient microdot if they really wanted to get slip past our methods.” He took another sip. “If that little girl thinks she can keep secrets from us, she’ll wish she’d never been born. When I’m done with her, she’ll wish she’d have died alongside her parents.” Reynolds considered himself a master at interrogation, relishing the use of torture to get what he wanted.
Campbell knew the General well. He remained at his desk, quiet and patient, waiting for what he knew was coming next.
In a flash, Reynolds launched himself out of his chair and flung his glass at the windows, dozens of crystal shards scattering across the floor and droplets of alcohol spraying the panes. Campbell’s eyes darted through the door toward Sienna. He was not surprised to see that she had not reacted to the sudden crash. He returned his gaze back to the man fuming in front of his desk. Reynolds was slamming his hands on the desktop. His face was livid, manic, but Campbell remained calm.
“If we don’t discover what the Chapels did and find a way to counteract it, our way of life will be over!” Reynolds bellowed.
Like Sienna, Campbell never reacted to one of Reynolds’ outbursts, but for a different reason. He knew how to keep a level head in the face of a storm, and responding would only make things worse. He knew this was Reynolds’ weakness, and he kept his thoughts to himself. He didn’t want to exacerbate the problem, nor did he want Reynolds to direct the rage towards him. Campbell ducked his head a little and lowered his voice.
“I’ve already dispatched the agent to collect Captain Evans and bring her to operations.”
Reynolds nodded his approval, his chest still heaving from the episode.
“What about the other agent?” he asked. “The male was taken into custody at the arena. Has he been compromised? Has his identity been discovered?”
“No, Sir,” Campbell said in a soft voice. “I circulated a falsified report that he was exposed to hazardous material and is to be kept under quarantine in a low level security station. They can’t conduct a proper interrogation without being in the same room with him, can they? Not that he’d talk, anyway.”
Reynolds chuckled. Those were the best agents he could have ever asked for. They were strong, agile, and tough with extraordinary endurance. Best of all, they would not say a word unless directed by their operators.
“With your permission, Sir,” Campbell said as he stood up from his chair. “I could instruct the female to recover the male before retrieving Captain Evans.”
Reynolds nodded again. “Good thinking. We need to eliminate the risk of his identity being discovered, and she needs him as a backup.” Reynolds looked at his still-dripping hand and shook the remainder of his drink from his fingers. He fastened the buttons on the coat of his uniform. Campbell’s eyes wandered toward the rank insignia on the lapels.
The uniform was a meticulously orchestrated façade. According to the name plate and insignia, he was a corporal name Samuels, the private messenger of General Reynolds. Outside the Quorum, and a few other select individuals, no one knew what Reynolds looked like because, as the rumor went, he never left his office.
As Corporal Samuels, on the other hand, he could fly under the radar. No one looked twice at a corporal, and he had a safety net in being a meager messenger. In fact, under the guise of Samuels, Reynolds’ favorite catch phrase was, “Don’t shoot the messenger!” whenever he delivered unpleasant orders. Reynolds returned the cap to the top of his chalk-white head. Campbell folded his arms behind his back and gave Reynolds a bow. He walked with him to the reception area where Sienna was organizing her desktop.
Reynolds leered at her, a smile playing across his lips. When he stepped through the door and was well on his way down the corridor, Campbell turned around on his heel and called over his shoulder to Sienna.
“No interruptions for the next fifteen minutes.” Campbell’s office door slammed shut behind him.
THIRTY-FIVE
Jack was trying to get in contact with Evangeline from his virtual workshop at home. He was desperate to know she was safe. The decrypted message about bringing her in for questioning gave him a sense of foreboding.
He tried calling her communicator. From what seemed like a distant dream, the sound of Evangeline’s ringtone echoed through the workshop. Jack recognized the sound with a wave of frustration. It was her communicator, sitting on the kitchen counter, having been forgotten when she left for the clinic.
“Damn!” Jack thought to himself. “Of all the days to forget…” The crash and Simmonds’ mysterious condition had her distracted inside her head again, and now he did not know how to reach her and let her know about the ominous message.
“Gideon?” he asked with a twinge of panic. “Find Evangeline, please.”
Gideon’s attention turned to his virtual displays. With his own form of sign language, he created a three dimensional map of Olympus and pulled up security feeds from dozens of cameras in the area.
“Beginning the search at the Level Ten Crisis Unit,” he said while he continued to search through streams of video footage. Jack could only think of a few places she would go, but if there were other people also trying to find her, there was no telling where she could have ended up.
The streams of data moved faster than Jack could keep up with. He turned his attention back to his workbench, confident and hopeful in Gideon’s capacity to search for Evangeline. He decided his efforts would be put to better use by completing Gideon’s upgrades and enhancements.
He stared at the trays of algorithms and subroutines, struggling to focus on his task. His mind kept replaying the bizarre message. The message could be related to the accident in the LTZ, or perhaps it had something to do with her trainee and the strange incident in the clinic. It might have been a routine follow-up required because she was in the military.
He took several slow, deep breaths. Ever since seeing the encrypted message regarding Evangeline’s retrieval, he had been suspicious and nervous. Nothing felt right, and he had too many worries and unanswered questions buzzing around in his head.
Gideon broke him out of his thoughts. “Jack, I’ve found Evangeline.” Jack sprang away from the workbench and jogged to stand beside Gideon in front of the displays.
“Where is she?” Jack asked, but he found her himself on the large display as she walked down a generic boulevard in Olympus.
“She has just exited a shuttle and appears to be heading toward the nearby maglev station,” Gideon said. He highlighted the route she had taken through the city. “Given the routes accessible from that particular station, she is either heading to the base or the Southwest LTZ.”
Jack exhaled a deep sigh of relief. “She must be heading to the base,” he said. “Place a message in her locker’s display that I’m trying to reach her, will you?”
He continued watching his wife, his best friend, on the display as she walked toward the station. “And place a message somewhere on the platform, somewhere inconspicuous. Let’s hope we can get her attention.”
Jack did not like it when he was unable to get through to Evangeline. He felt disconnected when he had no means of communication until she either walked in through the front door or was in the pilot’s ready room on the base. Jack just could not shake his uneasiness over the situation.
He turned his back from the displays, unable to watch over Evangeline and finish upgrading Gideon at the same time. He walked toward his workbench, and paused in mid-stride. He looked over his shoulder, and then turned himself around to face the array of monitors. “Keep an eye on her, will you, Gideon?” he asked with fixed eyes on the largest display.
Gideon turned around to face Jack with a slight tilt to his head. Jack had not yet installed the subroutine that would help Gideon interpret human emotion and expressions. For now, Gideon would just have to wonder abou
t the unfamiliar appearance of his creator’s face.
“Of course, Jack,” he answered and resumed monitoring the security feeds. Jack stood there for a moment, and then realized there was nothing he could do to help. Gideon was designed to handle tasks such as these, after all. All that was left for Jack to do was worry.
He returned to his workbench and continued preparing upgrades to Gideon’s matrix. There were too many subroutines that he wanted to install in Gideon, and he had to prioritize which were most important.
In that moment, the thought that came most strongly into his mind was of Evangeline.
Her happiness and her safety were most important to him.
That was where he started to focus his attention.
THIRTY-SIX
Evangeline reached the maglev platform, uncertain which direction she was going. A part of her needed to know if the photograph of her parents had been taken yet from her locker. The photo was not the only one she had of her parents. However, it had deep, sentimental value, as it was the only one she had of her with her parents from early childhood. Yet that was not the only reason urging her towards the base. She wanted to know if her attacker had believed her story about finding the photograph in the off-world lab.
She had taken a risk in admitting she had found something there at all. A photograph seemed like a benign souvenir to reclaim, even after years of denouncing her parents as traitors in public. Regardless of all the pain and lies, they were still her parents and nothing would ever change that.
As she stood on the platform, she noticed the clock. It was 7:30 p.m. She tried to stop the instant replay of the scene she had witnessed in Daryl’s room, but had been unable. She could not free her ears of his screaming, or erase from her mind the macabre vision of his face splitting away from his skull. Her walk through the inner streets of Olympus could not scrub the sights and sounds carved into her memory. Shudders raced from the base of her spine to her skull and back again. Her mind flew back and forth between the final outcry in his excruciating moment of lucidity about the man and the water, and her own interrogation by the woman cloaked in black. Her head was spinning out of control.
Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 19
