by David Beers
The building didn’t bulge again. It simply exploded. Wood, brick, stone—all of it rising into the air and rushing up at Nitson’s transport with such fury that he couldn’t see it all.
The pilot, for his part, tried to pull up and fly away.
“GO! GO! GO!” Nitson shouted as debris pummeled the transport. “G—”
He tried to say it once more, but only the first consonant left his mouth. A rock the size of a man’s fist slammed first through the floor and then through Cardinal Wen Nitson’s face. It obliterated his jaw, ending his ability to speak, then continued up through his head. In the end only the back of his skull remained connected to his neck, though it flapped forward onto his chest as the transport plunged toward the ground.
Twenty-Two
The Prophet
Christine walked behind Rebecca, with David leading the three of them. They were heading to the place where he would make his stand. He had planned this for years, the compound engineered specifically for the coming assault.
Every detail had been thought through long before the True Faith ever knew of David’s existence.
It was part of his genius, part of why he would win. Christine was feeling much of what Rhett had before he left—the worry spreading throughout the compound. The difference between her and Rhett was that she didn’t care. Her faith in David was absolute, and watching him over the past few hours had only strengthened it.
He reached for the door and that’s when she saw him stumble. His hands went to his temples and his back leg bent to its knee.
In a single second he’d gone from walking to kneeling on the floor.
Rebecca nearly ran into him and Christine into her.
“David!” Rebecca shouted, dropping to the ground next to him.
He let out a groan, unable to form words. Christine rushed to his other side.
“What is it? What’s wrong?” Rebecca asked.
Christine stared, eyes wide, feeling a sick terror growing in her stomach.
He’s fine, she thought. He’s fine.
“Move,” David managed to grunt out, as he half fell to the floor. He lay down on his back, both Christine and Rebecca moving out of his way.
“David,” Rebecca said, repositioning herself on her knees. “What is it? Talk to me.”
His hands still held his head, his mouth shut in a grimace.
“Her,” he said. “It’s her.”
Christine looked up and caught Rebecca’s eyes. There was only one other her in David’s life besides the two of them. The her neither had met. The her that Rhett had gone to find.
Christine looked back down at David. “What? What’s happening?”
“I don’t know. I can’t see. There’s only gray, everywhere.” He paused for a second, his mouth twisted as if he was lifting some heavy weight. “… It’s like the Unformed itself is there.”
Christine shook her head.
“That’s not possible,” Rebecca said.
David dropped his hands to the floor and opened his eyes, staring straight up at the ceiling. His own eyes were their usual green. His chest moved up and down with deep breaths, the hallway silent as the two women waited on him.
“There’s not time,” he said after a few moments. “The PD is almost here. There’s just not time.”
“Is it Rhett?” Rebecca asked.
“I don’t know. I can’t see anything, just gray.”
David pushed himself up, then slowly stood. Christine reached forward, standing up herself and helping him as she did. Rebecca grabbed his other arm, and both brought him to his feet.
“I want you two to gather everyone on the top floor.”
“What about—” Rebecca started asking.
“No,” David whispered. “I’ll handle everything here. You two go make sure everyone is safe above. When the PD gets here, I’ll bring them to me. You both know what to do.”
“Are you okay?” Christine asked, not wanting to take her arms from him.
He nodded, his eyes only looking at the platform outside. “I’m fine. Go now. There isn’t much time.”
Rebecca released her brother and Christine her leader. They stepped back, though David’s eyes were forward, not looking at either of them.
Christine turned toward Rebecca, who only shook her head no. They could do nothing but follow his instructions.
Rebecca turned first, Christine next, and the two left David alone at the bottom of the compound.
David stood in place for long minutes, knowing that he was wasting time that he didn’t have.
He could see the transports in his mind, and knew that within minutes he would see them with his eyes as well.
Yet, he didn’t step outside onto the platform, because he didn’t know what he’d just felt. It was unlike anything he’d ever experienced, a power he hadn’t ever considered, because it simply wasn’t possible.
Gray. That’s all he could see. The color of gray first building and then exploding. He didn’t know if there was death or destruction involved—he couldn’t see that.
But the gray could only mean one thing.
The Unformed. That which had been kept from Its rightful place, held outside this universe. The gray was Its color, the only true representation It had.
And David had seen that color … with her.
He didn’t understand. He didn’t know what it meant—and he didn’t know what had happened to Rhett.
There was no time to dwell on it. Minutes. That’s all he had left, and whatever happened on the other side of the world would have to keep until after.
KILL. HER.
The words pushed into his consciousness, what the Unformed had told him … and he’d sent Rhett to bring her back. Had it been the right decision?
There isn’t time, he thought. You deal with this attack, then her. You follow through with the choices you’ve already made.
David took in a deep breath and then walked out onto the platform. It resided at the very bottom of the compound, wrapping around as the others did, though this one stretched further. A full 500 yards.
David went to the edge of it, and looked over the side. There were no machines working down below, not this far out. There was only a rocky layer of earth. He looked up, the SkyLight still showing night.
He pushed the gray he’d seen completely from his mind. He pushed the thoughts of the woman in the Old World away. He removed Rhett from his mind. It was time to serve and he could only do that with a singular focus. The rest of it, everyone in the compound above him, everyone who served him—they no longer mattered.
His survival did, and thus, the survival of the Unformed.
David looked forward at the exact moment the first transports appeared.
A white speck on a dark background.
He closed his eyes for a second, and when he opened them, they were full of gray snow.
Zoom in, Raylyn told the transport’s nanotech. After a few seconds, Further.
The window in front of her zeroed in on the building before her—far off still—but now visible. It was a tall building, stretching deep below the Earth’s surface. They’d seen it in pictures during their research, but now … it felt ominous.
“How did they build it?” Lynda asked from her side. “With no help. Out here in the middle of nowhere.”
The Disciple said nothing, though even he leaned forward to get a better look.
“There. You see that?” Raylyn asked.
Lynda leaned in a little more.
“Oh my God,” she said, fear rippling through her voice.
Raylyn felt it too. Had she thought this was all some sort of game? Perhaps she hadn’t taken it that lightly, but she now realized the situation’s full gravity, and that she’d been naive. She thought the True Faith invincible. She thought Corinth would live forever. She thought the tales of the past, of the gray eyed woman named Rachel Veritros, were exaggerated. She thought that the informant, with their threats and hesitancy to share had on
ly been trying to save themselves.
Now, though, Raylyn understood the truth.
Rachel Veritros had been real.
The Unformed was real.
And the fight was here, upon them, in the man they could now see.
His eyes, full of flickering gray light, stared back, daring them to come.
To be continued …
The Prophet: Life
Rachel Veritros
Rachel Veritros was 19 years old when her life changed. The one that would come after (his name David Hollowborne) was younger when it happened to him, and the one that came before (her name lost to the world) was much younger. Much of Rachel’s life had been lost and distorted over time. The sect that continued on after her knew some of it, but no one knew the entirety. Too many years had passed and the Ministries grown too powerful.
They took what she was and what she did, and they twisted it for their own purposes.
The truth—as nearly all truth is—does not rest with the devotees who canonized her, nor the Ministries.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
At 19 years old, Rachel Veritros was nearing the age of marriage under the Constant Ministry. She woke up each morning and said her prayers, asking for the Constant’s protection and that she do Its will. Her marriage was coming soon, with the Community deciding her--and a nearly innumerable number of people’s--future. She would marry her first mate and have her first children, then she would give them up to the Community—just as she had been given up to It.
Rachel Veritros was nervous about these things, especially the marriage. She knew it was her duty, and excitement also resided there as well. At 19, without ever having had contact with boys, she couldn’t deny that the stirrings of lust played a part.
Who wouldn’t have been nervous, though? Meeting the man that you would spend the next ten years of your life with, regardless of what happened to either of you. A forced dedication, but also one that brought some comfort: one person, no matter what, would always be there.
Rachel had six more months before her marriage.
The Unformed came to her first, though, and Its marriage was for life. Nothing would ever separate her from It, nor It from her--not until she drew her last breath and died known as a horror, a traitor to humanity.
Perhaps the labels were worth that marriage, perhaps not.
History, like so many other things surrounding Rachel Veritros, left us in the dark on that matter.
The only thing Rachel Veritros disliked about her birthplace was the cold. The Constant Ministry grew out of the ancient Russian people. There were some warm places within its borders, but where Rachel grew up, cold reigned with impunity.
It was December and the sky was gray. Layered clouds rested overhead, creating a canvas that the blue behind them could not break through. Rachel was wrapped in a thick coat topped off with a heavy hat. She didn’t want to be outside, but she was needed at her job. The Constant Community was working toward a future which Rachel knew she’d never see—one in which robotics replaced the need for any human effort—but she was happy to work toward it. Maybe her children, or their children, would one day see it.
Snow was coming down, though not as heavy as most days. She was walking from her dormitory to the factory, where she would continue her apprenticeship. Rachel’s tests had shown aptitude in many areas, but the Community decided her personality would mesh well with military intelligence. She was being groomed to build future AI systems that could defend the Community against other Ministries.
There was no doubt in her mind, or anyone else’s inside the Constant, that one day others would come wanting to spread their own faiths far and wide.
When Rachel learned of her test results and the Community’s decision, she’d thought it sounded superb.
“Constant be with you,” she said as she passed a pair of girls heading back to the dormitory. She couldn’t tell who they were because their hats covered much of their faces, but she probably knew them, and they her. The dormitories were large and the amount of girls in them the same, but over 19 years, she grew acquainted with most everyone.
“Constant be with you,” she heard their muffled response.
She kept walking, feeling the fresh snow crunch beneath her feet.
It came then, the thing that would change her life—and that of so many others—in such drastic and disastrous ways.
The snow fell from above and Rachel took another step forward.
Then stopped.
Her head jerked upward so that she stared into the sky. Gone were her amber colored eyes, replaced with a brilliant and shocking gray, sparking in and out, coming alive and dying. Her arms shot downward and her legs tightened—her fingers were daggers pointing straight to the path below. Rachel’s back leg stepped forward so that both feet stood next to each other.
Rachel’s body looked strange, but her mind was somewhere else, somewhere far stranger.
The walkway, both in front of and behind her, was empty of people. No one was there to see it as it happened. A lone figure standing beneath a gray sky, eyes full of electricity.
Rachel stood that way for only a single minute.
To her, time seemed endless.
In fact, that moment might not have ended for Rachel Veritros … not until just before her life did.
Rachel Veritros saw the Unformed in that cold, snowy plaza. She saw Its glory and heard Its seductive voice.
When the connection finally broke, her eyes were nothing but gray sparks, though they were fading. She didn’t know that, of course. She only knew that there was work to be done, much of it, and that she needed to start immediately. Rachel Veritros came to know what all great people eventually discover—that when one finds one’s purpose, they don’t wait around to start it.
They begin at that very moment.
Rachel went back to her dorm, forsaking the job the Ministry gave her. Truthfully, she forsook the Ministry then too. There was no considering what she’d seen, no wondering if she was losing her mind. Rachel Veritros knew what she was to do from the moment her connection ended. For Rachel, crystallization had occurred and her life irrevocably changed.
She would, as time went on, wonder why the Unformed chose her—as all of her kind did. There were answers, though none of them felt right to her. Genetics was a possibility—her DNA allowing the creature from the Beyond to find her more easily. Personality, perhaps? The Unformed saw things inside of her that others in the population didn’t possess? It was possible.
There was no single answer for it and the Unformed never ventured to tell her. She never asked, but she imagined It wouldn’t have understood the question. The inquiry would have been too small, too limited for It to grasp.
Upon returning, Rachel didn’t stay long at her dorm. She packed up as much as she could, as quickly as she could. One of her roommates started asking her questions, and Rachel innately understood that those from before the Unformed no longer mattered. They weren’t real—creations from these Ministries that would shortly fall and burn.
She didn’t hurt her roommate, but thought she could have if she’d wanted. Rachel felt the power inside of her, even if she didn’t understand it. It was like looking at a sleeping predator, one that she’d never seen before. Rachel understood that if it woke, it could kill … though she didn’t know how—by tooth, claw, or something else.
She didn’t question the feeling, but accepted it the same as she had accepted what she must do.
Rachel Veritros packed two bags and walked out of her dorm room, her roommate calling after her.
She walked out into the winter knowing that soon she would be hunted. The Ministry would hear of her, of her escape, and they would send people to find her. Rachel—at that point—didn’t know the Unformed’s history, or that another had come before her. She didn’t consider that the Ministry might have suspicions about what happened to her … but it wouldn’t have mattered.
She walked out into the
cold and left her old life behind.
All of this, from start to finish, took only two hours.
The next few years of Rachel’s life were, more or less, a tornado. When she looked back on the ages of 19-23, she knew she survived only by the Unformed’s grace. She should have died innumerable times, but somehow managed to keep going.
Men came and went in her life. Early on, Rachel had been almost comically stupid. She spoke of the coming changes, of how the world would fall and the Unformed would take its rightful place. She could have been found immediately if someone had told. No one did, though. The men Rachel ran into weren’t concerned with glorifying the Constant Ministry, but with other things. They pretended to believe her, promised to help, and then used her until they had their fill.
The Unformed didn’t return to Rachel during this time. There was no connection for those five years, forcing Rachel to keep her faith despite no other proof.
She wandered the wilderness, latching onto different men and speaking words considered insane by anyone who heard them. She slept in the forests most of the time. Once in awhile she--or the man she was shacking up with--could afford a room in a city, but Rachel was wary of them. She understood that if the wrong person did hear her, she wouldn’t make it through the night. Winters were the worst, especially when she first started out, but by the end she had adapted.
At 23, Rachel still physically resembled the girl who had left the dorm room, but any innocence she once possessed had been killed, and ruthlessly so. She was still pretty, but harder. Sometimes, at night, after the man next to her was asleep and snoring, she would think back to that day in the plaza. She would remember what happened, and the words that had been spoken to her. She’d think about all the miles she’d traveled and wonder if it was worth it.
Sometimes, as the nights stretched long, she’d wonder if maybe she was insane. Men had told her that, right before they packed up their shit and left. They said she was nothing but a crazy whore and they hoped she’d contracted the syphilis they were carrying.
