by David Beers
Rachel pushed all of that away, time after time.
Only at night, she couldn’t always do it as forcefully. Doubt crept in. Because there hadn’t been any other contact with the Unformed. There’d been nothing but struggling to live through each day, struggling to find the next meal and to survive the predatory people she clung to. The Unformed, if it actually existed, had forsaken her. She was out here in the wilderness living amongst people who were off the grid, doing their best to take advantage of anyone they came across. She couldn’t go back to society. Not anymore. She was an outcast and would be seen as such immediately. What skills did she have? What could she even do if she returned?
Nothing.
She’d given up everything. A future. Family. Friends. Her entire life.
And for what? The man lying next to her? The trees above her? The snow coming down? The cold that embraced her each night?
It was on one of these nights that belief blossomed again inside Rachel, and it wasn’t the Unformed returning which did it. It was actually the piece of shit lying next to her.
His name had been …
No, that’s been lost to history, and a good thing, too. It is best not to remember such creatures’ names.
He woke up while Rachel was thinking her doubts, wanting another go.
“No,” Rachel said.
“What?” he asked, clearly not expecting any rebuke.
“No. Not right now.”
He looked at her for a few seconds, head cocked as if he wasn’t hearing correctly. As if he couldn’t believe the bitch would say anything like that to him, especially not after all he’d given her. Didn’t she have a mat to sleep on? Hadn’t he … well, no, he hadn’t shared any food with her, but what the fuck did that matter?
So, he reached down into his boot and pulled out a rusty knife.
“You’re gonna give me what I want, or you’re gonna have a second smile,” he said.
Rachel knew what to do then. It wasn’t the first time such things had been threatened, and usually the men meant what they said. It was easiest to give them their squirt and then roll over and try for sleep.
This time, though … she felt different.
She didn’t even look at him when she said, “No.”
Even as he stood, Rachel didn’t grant him a glance. She kept staring straight up into the starry sky, tall trees cupping her view.
“Fuck you,” the man said, knife in hand and looking down on her. He was a bit unsure of what to do, though the hard-on in his pants wasn’t going to let him just quit. Nor would his pride. Normally these little forest skanks did whatever he wanted, but this one didn’t seem the least bit scared. “Fuck you,” he said again.
He kicked her in the ribs, his foot launching forward while both happiness and rage rose simultaneously inside him.
Or at least, that’s what he thought he was doing.
His foot froze in the air and he looked down at eyes he’d never seen before. Eyes that fit her perfectly, because the bitch beneath him had been crazy--and now her eyes were glowing gray like the dirty snow they trudged through each day.
He tried to yank his foot back but he couldn’t. He couldn’t move it at all.
Rachel looked up into the sky, finally feeling the predator wake up. For years it had remained dormant and forgotten. Right after seeing the Unformed, it’d been there like a lump in her throat—noticeable. But then it faded.
Until now.
The man was screaming something but Rachel didn’t hear the words. She felt good. She felt happy. She didn’t know her eyes were far past sparking, now nearly on fire.
The man was inconsequential, and Rachel realized she no longer wanted him here.
He began floating into the air, at first only a foot off the ground, but Rachel didn’t stop there. She kept pushing him higher and higher until he reached the top of the tree line.
She paused for a second, seeing his outline and hearing his shrieks calling down to her, begging her to stop.
No, she thought. That’s still too close.
He floated higher, and over the course of the next hour, his ascent didn’t stop. In the end, the oxygen grew too thin for him to breathe and he passed out, eventually suffocating while unconscious—which was probably too peaceful for someone like him.
Rachel remained on the ground, lying in her same spot, eyes bright in the darkness and resembling the moon above.
She could no longer see the man, and with another thought, flicked him.
His body fell back to the Earth, crashing down amongst trees miles from her, breaking branches and brush alike. Rachel didn’t hear it, nor did he ever cross her mind again.
She stayed where she was until the sun rose.
The gray sparks in her eyes finally died down as she stood up.
There’d been no connection with the Unformed, but Rachel finally realized that wasn’t needed—not for her to begin working.
At 23, Rachel Veritros’s time in the wilderness ended.
She headed back to society, back to the Ministry she’d left, knowing what she must do.
Rachel Veritros wasted no time once returning to civilization.
She understood what was to be done, her path crystallizing during her long years of walking in the wilderness.
The recruitment started in earnest on day two of her return. There wasn’t time to waste. The quicker forces gathered to her side, the quicker her purpose would be fulfilled.
It’s important to understand Rachel’s need. What consumed her wasn’t passion—the word wasn’t strong enough. Perhaps obsession wasn’t either. Rachel was possessed. She’d been shown a truth that only one other person had known. Rachel was aware of the young girl, and that the Ministries had murdered her and her followers.
Still, some had managed escape. Not all were found.
And their blood spread to their offspring. The Blood of the Touched. Waiting on another Touched to arrive.
Veritros went to them first, those descendants of the murdered young girl. Some heard her, and when her eyes turned gray and their blood began to itch, they knew she spoke the truth. They knew that she would bring final and everlasting justice upon this world.
She was what many had been waiting for.
Not all, of course. She went to some who thought her insane, and their betrayal couldn’t be risked. Rachel disposed of them quickly, without any more thought than she’d given the man in the woods.
Her numbers grew. The first year was the harshest. It involved travel and avoiding authorities, but Rachel knew she was on the side of the righteous. She couldn’t be stopped.
Sometimes, those descendants showed up on her doorstep, their blood leading them to her. Rachel never asked questions, she simply accepted it as divine intervention. The Unformed was with her, guiding her and them. Guaranteeing Its arrival.
Rachel’s power grew greater, her connection with the Unformed stronger. Her followers saw it, and they both feared and respected it.
She assigned lieutenants, people who swore loyalty to her and the Unformed. They would die for her, sacrifice their families and whatever else they held dear. These were true believers, and all ended up giving their lives for Rachel Veritros.
Once a girl that only wanted to serve her god, she was now a woman possessed of a divination.
And perhaps, there was very little difference between those two people.
Or, perhaps, there was more difference than anyone could adequately express.
Rachel stayed below the Ministries’ radar, even as her numbers swelled. Perhaps the Ministries didn’t understand that the Unformed would return. Perhaps they’d forgotten the message received last time. Perhaps they were too arrogant to think they could miss something growing beneath their foot.
Or, a better analogy, something growing inside of them.
The Ministries would have thought it cancer, something to be cut out, excised.
Rachel Veritros considered it evolution—an organism that ecl
ipses its host, and when it finally happened, the frailties of humanity and their false gods would fall away.
Leaving only perfection.
The five years after her return were ones of rapid change for Rachel Veritros, in which her faith abounded and her conviction knew no bounds.
She was the righteous.
She was the harbinger of the universe’s rightful God.
She was what would end this world, and begin a new one.
Those five years ended, though, and just as it would for the one who came after her, war began for Rachel Veritros.
Twenty-Three
Raylyn’s transport was 500 yards from the platform. Scores of militarized transports floated in front of her, all waiting on her command to attack the compound. They’d all come to a stop minutes before; Raylyn’s gut was a block of ice.
She couldn’t take her eyes from the man on the platform. He hadn’t moved, but stood still in the predawn darkness, his eyes like stars guiding Raylyn to the correct place.
“He knew,” Raylyn said to the others in the transport with her. Her second in command, Lynda Minson, and the Disciple—whose name was Rogan, though the man resembled few other human traits outside of his name. “He knew we were coming.” She looked to Lynda on her right. “Was it the informant? Did they tell him?”
Lynda shook her head. Feeling the same thing Raylyn did. Fear. Terror. All of it like ice, freezing them immobile.
“Yes,” the Disciple said. “They did tell him. They folded, and that’s why they’re going to die today with the rest of them. Are we ready?”
Raylyn didn’t know if she was or not. The informant’s thought came back to her: If you come, and he’s here, we’ll probably all die—all of us but him.
Was this a mistake? Because Raylyn, despite her faith in Corinth and the Priesthood and everything else holy, saw something she didn’t understand. Perhaps she hadn’t actually believed it was possible, not until it was right here in front of her. All of it had been a myth, just another cult she would stomp out and then move on in her service to Corinth.
But now she saw the truth.
A man who stood without bowing his knee or turning to run, but stared down a force strong enough to destroy his compound—one that would send it falling to the depths below as nothing more than a flaming wreck. He didn’t move, though. He was daring them to come.
“Raylyn?” the Disciple asked, his voice as harsh as she’d ever heard it. It snapped her from her thoughts, all of them threatening to drown her beneath their sheer number.
“Yes. We’re ready,” she said. “Launch the attack.”
A second passed, her message flowing from her lips to the artificial intelligence systems controlling the ships. Her transport’s screen showed information on the top left side, AI readouts from around the compound. A high density of people in the upper floors close to the Earth’s surface. Military grade ClearViews floating up and down the building. No digital coating was detected over the structure, though, which Raylyn took some comfort in. These people might have some defenses, but they lacked true heavy power. They were technologically inept for this battle.
Is that so? Does the man with shining gray eyes look inept? Does he look worried?
The transport formation split. Sitting in long rows, half moved up, and half down. The pattern was every other one, so that if one transport went higher, the next lower, with about 50 feet separating them.
They paused for a second, and Raylyn divided her attention between the actual transports and the data displaying on the screen. Another second passed, and then the transports moved, half heading toward the mass of people at the top of the compound, half heading toward the man on the platform.
Raylyn thought it surprising, the AI thinking the singular figure such a threat that it would send so many toward him. Half would handle the group near the surface, while the rest dealt with the gray-eyed demon.
Raylyn’s transport hung back, not venturing forward. She felt the Disciple move closer to the front of the transport, in between her and Lynda.
Two hundred and fifty transports swung upward, forming an arch as they did. The other half went in a straight line, their angle not as sharp.
The gray eyes didn’t move, not forward nor backward. He remained steady.
“What’s he going to do?” Lynda asked. “What can he possibly do?”
And Raylyn understood the sentiment. There were just too many transports. Five hundred and all swarming forward like deadly insects, knowing only to kill anything not their kind.
“Go forward,” the Disciple said.
“No,” Raylyn answered. She didn’t look at him as she said it, and felt no fear either. Because the man in front of her scared her worse than the man behind her, and she’d stay right where she was until she better understood this weapon’s capabilities.
The Disciple said nothing.
The transports heading toward him were only a hundred feet away now. Raylyn’s hands gripped her knees, her knuckles turning white and the muscles in her forearms flexing.
“Why aren’t they firing yet?” she whispered.
And as if the AI heard her, the transports’ weapons rose into place—all 250 at once. The transports split again, half dropping up and half down, though spreading themselves further out this time to avoid friendly fire.
A moment, and then the sky lit as if the sun had been dropped beneath the Earth’s crust.
Brilliant orange streaked from each of the transports’ weapons—a combination of self-generating nanotech and AI powered lasers. Orange flames blazed through the sky, billowing out behind the lasers that zeroed in on the only man before them. They shot straight forward, simultaneously directing the orange flames to spread up and out, creating a wall of fire around the bottom platform. The fire pulled away from the lasers and slowly pressed down on the platform, creating unbearable heat across it.
Raylyn’s screen bypassed the ships and the wall of fire, able to see past the battle and focus on the platform.
The man still hadn’t moved, though the True Faith’s full power was upon him.
Lasers streaked across the sky, countless in number. She only had a second to think it, but Raylyn knew he was dead. She knew that her earlier doubts had been silly, ill founded, and that she should pay consequences for thinking them. She would gladly do so, giving herself over to the Priesthood for whatever punishment they deemed necessary.
The lasers never hit their target.
The flames didn’t touch a garment on his body.
His eyes blazed out, the gray in them flying forward like electrical spiderwebs, creating wispy tentacles that spread across the area in front of him.
The lasers were within an inch of striking, and there they stopped. They simply halted as if the universe’s physical laws no longer applied.
“No,” the Disciple whispered, leaning almost all the way into the front seat now. “That’s not possible.”
The man stood with fire raging around him and innumerable orange lasers pointing at him, ready to obliterate his body, but not quite touching him. His hands remained at his sides. Raylyn had forgotten about the transports moving upward; her mind was paralyzed on the screen in front of her.
The spiderwebs continued spreading from the man’s eyes, encountering the green lasers now, and as his webs crisscrossed their brutal light, they began changing. Gray cut through them, spreading the same as it did through the air. Eating the green and replacing it with gray, electrical currents—if that’s what it even was, how could Raylyn know?
The man raised his arms, and they seemed to move faster than the lasers had.
The stillness ended.
Everything rushed upward. The transports, the fire, the lasers, all of it moved with reckless abandonment. Transports slammed into each other, glass and metal breaking as they ripped apart. The flames caught hold of the transports, the nanotech no longer driven by AI, but by the simple need to continue burning. The lasers sliced through fir
e and steel alike, twisting and turning as they wound their way up the outside of the building.
Raylyn’s screen pulled back, and she watched the disaster blow upward as if a wind carried it. The transports tossed and turned over one another, the green lasers twirling with streaks of the man’s gray eyes flittering through them.
“No,” Lynda said, echoing the Disciple’s words.
Because they saw what was going to happen. The wreckage flying upward was aiming at the other group of transports, the ones heading to those near the surface.
“They’re not going to make it,” Raylyn said, understanding flying wreckage would reach the unharmed transports before they could attack.
The upper force was slowing, its weapons locking into place, but the fire from below roared over them all. The lasers came next, slicing through machine and fire alike—all of it the same to the unfeeling light.
And finally, the tumbling transports smashed into their brethren. The AI was finally reacting, some of the above transports trying to maneuver away, but it was too late. Not a single shot had been fired at the upper levels of the compound. Transports were falling from the sky, rolling over and over with fire burning across their metal skeletons.
Raylyn’s eyes went back to the man at the bottom.
His arms had dropped but the spiderwebs branching out from his eyes had now surrounded his body. He stared up at her, even as hundreds of ships fell down in front of him. It was the True Faith’s power, now raining down, dead.
David could feel his followers above him, their exhalations almost palpable. His blood burned and he knew theirs did too, but also that while it might hurt, there was immense pleasure in it as well.
Blocks of steel tumbled before him.
He couldn’t feel the fire’s heat, though he could see it rising off the falling transports.
Hundreds, all falling like rocks from the sky, as if an avalanche had somehow started from the Earth’s crust.
