by David Beers
When the children walked out into the world as adults, they knew nothing of the old ways—only a deep love for their religion. Perhaps in the past, some governments had managed similar dedication, but nothing as grand. Complete devotion, without even a thought of treachery.
This is only an overview, clearly. The pain that accompanied such change … well, on an individual level, it was perhaps as horrific as anything the Reformation had inflicted. The Ministries destroyed more of the world’s population in their quest, the reason the same as before: those with different beliefs had to be eradicated. The Ministries hoped that the end result would bring peace.
As all who commit such acts must surely hope.
Nine
The Prophet
Rhett took his seat at the table with Christine and Rebecca. He wanted to take David in completely. Rhett hadn’t seen him in two days, but knew he wasn’t sleeping—he’d felt David working much of the time.
“You don’t look well,” Rhett said as the other two women sat down beside him.
“I’m fine. We’re not here to talk about me anyway.”
Rhett nodded. He knew that was true, but he also knew that if David didn’t get some sleep and food soon, he was going to collapse. It didn’t matter what connection he held to the Unformed, if he continued on like this, he wouldn’t last much longer.
“I’m seeing less and less,” David said. He leaned forward and placed his arms on the table.
They were in his study again and Rhett wondered if he’d actually left it in the past week, or if he’d just sat here the entire time. Rhett was going to have to talk to the other two about this soon.
“Even you three are becoming hazy to me, and I’ve always been able to see the clearest with you. You haven’t fully disappeared, but what I can see is sporadic at best. The rest of my followers might as well be nonexistent. I can’t see or touch any of them.”
“They’re feeling you less, too,” Rebecca said. “I think we all are.”
Rhett nodded. While he still felt connected to David, he was experiencing less pain, though it was obvious David wasn’t. Rhett could feel when he was working, using the Unformed’s connection, but it was dampened.
“It’s her,” David said. “The woman in the Old World. Whatever she’s doing, it’s interrupting me.”
“That’s not possible,” Rebecca said. “Your blood is in us. The Blood of the Touched. Nothing can block that.”
“Clearly that’s not the case,” David said. “What we once believed is changing, and we’re going to have to change with it.” He looked at the three of them silently for a moment. “I asked you here because we need to find the traitor. I’m not going to be able to do it on my own. I can’t see far enough. The three of you are going to have to help.”
“What does all of this mean, David?” Rebecca asked. “What’s the Unformed say about it?”
“I don’t know what it means. I can’t connect with the Unformed either.” He stared at her as if daring her to challenge him. Rhett understood they were treading upon unsure ground here, and he hoped Rebecca understood it too.
“So we’re in the dark?” Rebecca asked.
“Yes.”
Christine was quiet. Out of the three, Rebecca was always the boldest when it came to challenging him. Christine was bold, but she acquiesced the same as Rhett. Rebecca would grow anxious before anyone else, but when it came to disagreeing with David, she was the one to speak up. They all had David’s blood in them, but Rebecca’s came from the same stock. Perhaps David was more lenient on her, too—Rhett couldn’t imagine anyone else challenging him as she did and David behaving with such restraint.
David broke his gaze with his sister and leaned back in his chair.
“How do we catch the traitor? It’s more important than the woman right now. If the Ministry moves on us now, we’re dead.”
Rhett was quiet, unsure of what to say. He felt like David was asking something impossible. None of them had his abilities, and his followers now numbered in the millions. Rhett didn’t have the exact data—though he could get it if he needed—but to somehow comb through each person? It couldn’t be done.
“Whoever it is,” Christine said, “they have to be here. With us. They can’t be spread throughout the True Faith or another Ministry.”
“Why?” Rebecca asked.
“No one knows where David is. No one except the people here.”
“She’s right,” Rhett said. “If the traitor lived outside the compound, they wouldn’t know enough to send people here.”
David nodded. His eyes weren’t sparking but anger grew rapidly across his face. Someone here had turned on him, someone he brought inside the home he’d built. It was unthinkable.
“I have an idea,” Christine said.
Rhett turned toward her, looking past Rebecca as he did. Rebecca’s eyes were narrow and Rhett already knew she wouldn’t like any idea Christine gave. A cruel streak ran through Christine, and Rhett believed that’s why David felt such kinship with her. The cruelness matched his own, and it was something both Rhett and Rebecca lacked.
“What is it?” David asked.
“If they live here with us, then that means they know us. When was the last time we brought someone into the compound?”
“Maybe five years ago,” David answered.
“Exactly. We don’t bring people in often and when we do, they stay. So these people live next to us. They love us.”
“What’s your point?” Rebecca asked.
“They might not love David anymore. They might hate him. But I don’t think that means they hate the rest of us.”
“Damn it, Christine, just say it.”
“We sacrifice someone in the compound. We do it publicly. We say that they’re the traitor and we kill them, or get as close as we can without actually doing it. The traitor will come forth, before we let them die.”
“No,” Rebecca said, her head snapping toward David. “No, and that’s final. We’re not killing one of our own, not even if it means getting the traitor.”
David said nothing but kept looking at Christine.
“Do you hear me? We’re not doing this,” his sister said. “I’m not going along with it. We’re not killing someone to ferret out whoever is doing this.”
David looked to her then. “Why not?”
“Because, it’s wrong, David!”
“We don’t actually have to kill them,” Christine said. “We just have to make people think we’re going to.”
“And what if no one speaks up? What if everyone just looks on as David uses his power on this person? What do we do? Let them go without killing them? No, and you know it. If we put this person up there, and no one comes forth with the truth, then someone innocent dies.”
Rhett listened to the back and forth. He wasn’t completely sure what had just happened. He’d never heard anything like this, never thought he would either.
“Rebecca,” David said. “What’s the point in what we’re doing?”
“It doesn’t matter what the point is. It matters what the hell you’re sitting here discussing. You’re talking about killing someone who’s sworn allegiance to you. You’re talking about someone innocent, with children and a family. You’re talking about killing people who love you.”
“I’m talking about saving our entire movement, our entire purpose.”
“They won’t die,” Christine said. “The traitor will speak up first.”
Rebecca whipped around, her temper raging. “You don’t fucking know that.”
Christine didn’t look over, but kept her eyes on David. “It’s our best chance. I don’t have any other ideas.”
“No, of course you don’t,” Rebecca said. “Your ideas only consist of hurting people.” She looked back to David. “Don’t do this. It’s not the right choice.”
She stood up and left the table. Rhett listened as her footfalls echoed off the high ceilings. The door slammed behind her as she stormed from
the room.
“What do you think?”
Rhett looked back to David.
“I … I don’t know.” Rhett looked down at the table. They had killed before, both he and David. He’d seen the power David wielded, and watched him wield it against people—but this … this was something different. “She’s right,” Rhett said. “We’re doing something we haven’t before, and I’m not sure it’s something we can come back from.”
“Rhett,” David said, “we’re facing extinction. What’s one person in the face of that? One person who might die anyway when the Unformed decides it’s time to reveal Itself. When the Summoning starts.”
“I don’t know,” Rhett said. “But I do know everyone that lives here, and that means one of my friends is going to die.”
“Do you have another idea?” David asked.
Rhett looked up. “May I have a day?”
David was quiet. He looked at Rhett, his face pale and tired, but despite his body, his eyes still held their same intensity. Their same focus.
“One day. If you come up with nothing, then we go with Christine’s idea.”
“We’ve got 24 hours to figure out another idea.”
“He’s out of his mind, and so is that bitch,” Rebecca said, her voice on the verge of screaming. She was pacing back and forth across her bedroom. Rhett lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
“Neither of them are out of their minds, Rebecca. They’re right in a sense.”
“How?” she said.
“What David said after you left. One person against our entire future? We give that one person up. It might not be what we want to do. We might hate it. But he’s right, if that’s what it comes to, that’s what we do.”
“You really believe that?” Rebecca said, stopping and looking down at him on the bed.
Rhett nodded.
“I don’t.”
“Then you’ve lost your faith,” Rhett said.
“No. My faith doesn’t mean I have to give up my soul.”
Rhett’s eyes narrowed and he turned his head on the pillow. “Your faith is your soul, Rebecca. Your belief in David and the Unformed. The Prophet and our God. It’s them we live for, not ourselves. Or do you not believe that anymore?”
It was a question Rhett didn’t think he’d ever have to ask anyone in their group, especially not Rebecca.
She stared at him for a few seconds and he could see her wrestling with what he’d asked.
“It’s not right,” she finally said.
“And do you determine that, Rebecca? Are you the final arbiter on morality? Because I always thought it was David and the Unformed.”
Rebecca shook her head and looked away. Tears were running down her cheeks.
“We have 24 hours to come up with something. I don’t want to do this. I’m only saying that if there are no other ideas, then Christine’s is our only option.”
“Fine.”
“So let’s start thinking.”
Rhett and Rebecca brainstormed for hours upon hours. They threw out ideas and rejected them nearly as quickly. They sat in silence for a great deal of time, both deep in thought. Rebecca began drawing by hand at one point, just doodling to help her mind work. Rhett took notes.
The ideas they created all felt half cooked and were riddled with flaws.
The time ticked by, and Rhett felt each passing second as if someone was adding a pebble to a bag he carried on his back. It kept growing heavier, and he knew sooner or later, the weight would pull him to the ground.
Because he didn’t want to go along with Christine’s idea.
He would, and more willingly than Rebecca, but he hated it. One of his friends would die, and while their death would serve a greater purpose …
Think. Just think, damn it.
“Let’s interview everyone,” Rebecca said.
“It would take too much time.”
She knew it was true, so she dropped it. Nearly 400 people lived in the compound and to interview everyone would take weeks. The Ministry could have set the entire building ablaze by that time.
“What about trying to get that woman in the Old World first? We go to her, eliminate her, and then David can see again. Then we find out who it is.” Even as he said the words, Rhett understood the issues preventing the idea from being realized. Rebecca didn’t even look up, let alone say anything.
Time.
It all came down to time.
There wasn’t enough of it.
Rhett went alone back to David’s study, leaving Rebecca behind. Neither had slept the entire night, and now Rhett was returning with the only idea they had.
It wouldn’t help discover the traitor.
But it might make the person’s death easier.
“Come in,” David called from the other side.
Rhett opened the doors and stepped in. David stood in front of the windows to his right, staring out at the underground sky. Rhett wondered how long he’d been standing like that, looking at the world around him, lost in thought.
How long over the past week?
Only one answer came back, too long.
“Do you have anything for me?” David asked.
“Nothing that is going to save anyone, but I think we might be able to help our consciences some.”
“How so?”
“You have to find a volunteer,” Rhett said. “You have to ask someone to do this for you. That way they’ll knowingly be involved. It won’t take away their death, but it might mean we’re not as cruel.”
David turned around. His eyes were wet.
“I didn’t consider that,” he said.
“None of us did.”
David nodded, not wiping away the tears.
“I’m sorry this has to be done.”
“Me too,” Rhett said.
Had he seen such insecurity in David before? Had anyone? Rhett didn’t think so. Maybe tears, but not for a long, long time. David had made it seem easy when in front of Christine and Rebecca, as if this were something that he could do without a second thought.
The person in front of Rhett now didn’t look like that at all. He was breaking down, unsure of which way to turn.
Is he lost? Rhett wondered. If so, then we all are.
“Do you still love me?”
Rhett nodded. “Forever, David.”
“No matter what I have to do?”
The answer was sure, as it had always been. “No matter what.”
Rhett stood in the back of the study, watching from a corner. David had asked him to stay, and Rhett wouldn’t tell him no, though he didn’t want to be here. Not for this.
Twelve hours passed since David asked his questions. Rhett had seen Rebecca since then, telling her David agreed with their idea, but he said nothing of the questions nor the tears he’d seen. If David didn’t want the world to know, then it wasn’t Rhett’s place to tell.
Being here now … it felt like Rhett was peering into someone’s most private thoughts, and he didn’t like it.
David sat across the room with a man named Stellan. They sat on two chairs, pulled close to one another.
“He’s here to support me,” David had said, motioning to Rhett. Rhett knew Stellan. They were friends even if nothing deeper. “He’s supporting me because what I’m about to ask you to do is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Is it okay if he stays?”
“Of course, David,” Stellan had told him.
Rhett was always amazed when David showed his true personality, the one now on display. The anger, the rage, the connection—those were all parts of David, but they weren’t his essence. Those things alone couldn’t have compelled Rhett to follow him as far as he had. Not even the Unformed could have pushed him for 20 plus years, not without a leader he loved at the helm.
The man talking to Stellan, he was that leader.
Rhett stared out the window, listening to the conversation taking place softly behind him. He wanted to give them as much privacy as possible, but
he couldn’t stop the words filling the room.
And they were difficult to hear.
David was weeping, not heavily, but the emotion was real. “There’s nothing greater you can give me, or the Unformed, and I know that. I don’t think you’ll die, Stellan, but the possibility exists.”
Stellan was quiet, and Rhett wanted to see what he looked like. Was he staring forward, looking like a man just launched into outer space with no hope of returning? Rhett couldn’t hear him crying, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t. Was he sad? Happy? Proud that David chose him to give his life?
“If you say no,” David continued, “that’s perfectly fine. You won’t be judged and no one else will ever know about this. The choice is completely yours, Stellan, and I want you to make it knowing that whatever you choose, I care deeply for you.”
More silence, and then Rhett heard movement. He didn’t know what it meant, and despite wanting to give them privacy, he turned around.
The two were hugging each other, both leaning almost off their chairs and embracing one another.
They held each other for a minute, and Rhett looked on. In that moment, he felt jealousy, recognizing it immediately for what it was. Jealousy of Stellan—and the reasons were legion. For David’s embrace, hearing how much he was loved. For the bravery Rhett wasn’t showing, but Stellan was. For Stellan willingly giving his life to the calling they had all agreed to follow.
Rhett turned from them and looked back into the open air outside.
He felt sorry for the people not within these walls. They didn’t understand and never would, what they had missed their entire lives. The two people behind Rhett, their unflinching love for each other and dedication to a greater goal, they were the perfect example of what the rest of the world could never understand.
