by David Beers
The two conjectures wouldn’t compute in her mind. They were things that couldn’t exist at the same time, yet the person she loved said they did.
Forty-One
“I want to know about the blood. I think that’s as good a place to start as any. It’s his blood right? Or it was, at least, since there isn’t a ‘he’ any longer.”
Rhett looked at the back of the First Priest’s head. Rhett still hung from the wall, though Christine was no longer there. Rhett had seen some of Christine when they pulled her down; her body looked like a disease had taken hold of it—something that primarily affected her skin. Red dots littered her flesh, and Rhett understood what had happened.
The Disciple had used her nanotech, perhaps down to her very atoms, and that was the result. The pocks across every inch of visible skin.
Christine had been unconscious when they pulled her down.
She wasn’t now. The First Priest was looking at her. Rhett doubted she was in the room right next to his, as the wall in front of him portrayed. The wall would show Rhett whatever the Priest wanted it to, and right now, they looked at Christine.
She was hanging somewhere, just like him.
“Can she see me?” he asked.
“Not right now,” the First Priest said without turning around.
The display’s implied threat was clear. If Rhett didn’t tell this man what he wanted to hear, then there would be pain—not for Rhett, but for Christine.
“The blood, Mr. Scoble. What is it? What does it do?”
Rhett sighed. He knew what Christine would tell him to do. Spit on this Priest and let her die. She was always the cruelest, but at least she was consistent with it. The cruelty would extend to herself as well.
Rhett knew he couldn’t do that, though. A part of him wanted to, not out of any hatred toward Christine, but because … fuck these people. This Priest. The True Faith. Corinth. The entire false religion, and giving them anything at all would have been a betrayal to David, to the Unformed—
David isn’t alive and the Unformed is gone, his mind responded. All that’s left is you and Christine. Not even Rebecca matters anymore. You only have each other.
“Mr. Scoble?” the First asked.
“What do you want to know about it?”
“Let’s begin with the basics. It’s his blood, correct?”
“Yes,” Rhett said. “His, or someone like him.”
“What do you mean?” the First Priest asked, turning around.
These people were clueless. They had no idea what David had done, nor how he did it … and yet, they defeated him.
No, Rebecca defeated him. These people here couldn’t do anything by themselves.
“The Blood of the Touched is passed from parent to child,” Rhett said, keeping his thoughts to himself. “There were two before David. Abby and Veritros—”
“Abby?”
“That’s what we call the girl. We don’t know her name.” Rhett paused for a beat, then asked, “Do you?”
The First stared at him for a second, then smiled. “You love these people don’t you? Truly idolize them. Even Veritros, with all her destruction. It’s remarkable, how crazy you all are.”
Rhett glanced up to Christine, not needing to say a word. The First Priest called him crazy, while at the same time hanging a woman from the wall. The Priest didn’t lose his smile.
“It’s not crazy to kill the crazies. Because, after all, it was you who started this, correct? With your Summoning?”
Rhett met the First Priest’s eyes. “You attacked our home.”
The First looked on for a second longer, then waved the comment away. “Let’s continue. So this disease, it passes from mother to child? Or father to child? Does it pass from spouse to spouse during sex?”
“No. Just through descendants.”
The First nodded and turned back to the wall displaying Christine. “That puts a lot of this in perspective. You all don’t really need to spread that much, to ‘convert’ as you call it. You have an inbred conversion already happening, and after 1,000 years … even if we wipe out 90%, there’s a lot of you ….”
He trailed off and Rhett said nothing. He didn’t know how much he was hurting the Unformed’s cause, whether he was ruining any chance of It ever returning; he only understood that he might be helping Christine.
“Truly, in order to make sure that your kind doesn’t rise again, we’ll have to kill all of you. Everyone who ever encountered any of the three Prophets ….” He trailed off again, but only for a few moments. “Tell me what the blood does. Why is it important?”
“What do you know?” Rhett said, unable to keep the words inside. He was almost flabbergasted at how stupid these people were; after thousands of years, they still struggled with the most basic concepts.
“I’ll ask the questions, Mr. Scoble. Go on. Answer.”
“The blood connects us with him. When he’s working, it lets us—”
“Working?” the First asked.
“Connecting to the Unformed. Or using his powers. Our blood … it sort of itches.”
“But why would you want that? What’s the benefit? Does it let him communicate to you?”
Rhett smiled a bit. “How do you think the Summoning was possible? He couldn’t have had all those people move at once otherwise.”
The First Priest must have heard the smile through his voice. He turned around, his own wiped from his face. “If I were you, I’d limit the arrogance … If we were to take some of your blood, would we be able to see it? Would there be any difference?”
“I don’t know,” Rhett said. “I doubt it; it’s one of the reasons we went undetected for so long.”
The First looked back to Christine. “Never mind. We’ll find out with your friend here. You too, I think. There’s one thing that has bothered me about this conversation. You keep talking about your Prophet in the present tense. There is no more present tense for him, only the past. I want you to remember that next time we talk.”
“Christine Fain is certainly a feisty one,” the First Priest said. He was in good spirits, the best he’d felt in a long time. Better even than before the Black had showed up. Because he was winning now, and from the looks of it, would continue doing so.
They were draining blood from the two downstairs, and soon they’d know everything about it. The First had taken it easy on Scoble when removing the blood; he needed Scoble to continue talking. He hadn’t been as kind to Fain though.
She had hurt … and while the First hadn’t physically touched her, he still liked it. Not quite as much as the slap he’d given the Hollowborne woman, but it was close.
“Did you and Christine get along before you betrayed her and everyone else you loved?” the First asked Hollowborne.
“Is she okay?” the woman asked from her stool.
“It’s all relative.” The First’s nanotech pulled a chair from the wall and he sat down on it. He wasn’t as close to Hollowborne as last time, wanting to give her some space. She would need to speak at great lengths, and the First Priest didn’t want her to feel pressure, at least not too much. The entire environment around her was the pressure, her friends, her captivity—doing more now wouldn’t help him. “I’d like to start talking about your Prophet.”
“How badly have you hurt her?” Hollowborne asked.
The First Priest studied her for a moment, then said, “She’ll live. My hand is still a little sore from the last smack I had to give you, and I’m sure your face is tender. We can do it again if you want, though.”
True fire birthed in the woman’s eyes, but quickly died. The First could almost see her mind extinguishing it, telling her the pain wasn’t worth it.
“You’re a prideful group, aren’t you?” the First said. “You really thought this creature would lead you to victory. The Unformed. And now you’re just starting to realize It won’t, but that arrogance hangs on. I wonder, having you three here, will that be the last to go?”
&nb
sp; “What’s happening outside? To the rest of us?”
“The same fate that you had wanted to yoke on our shoulders. You’re all dying. I spoke with Scoble earlier about his blood. The Prophet’s. There’s something to it, because the moment your brother died, things started turning. The bloodlust craziness you all possessed seemed to just cease.” He smiled. “And now, we’re exterminating everyone. The other Ministries as well. By the end, there will be none of you left, and with you and Scoble helping so much, we’ll make sure the bloodline ends for good.”
Hollowborne looked away from him. She blinked a few times, and then a finger went to the corner of her eye, wiping away tears.
“You wanted this, so why the tears?”
She shook her head. “No. I never wanted this. I didn’t want all of us dead. I didn’t want Christine tortured. No.” Hollowborne didn’t look at him as she spoke, only stared at the floor in front of her.
“But you wanted that for us, right?” the First whispered, finding real joy in this. He was beginning to understand there were different types of torture. The physical kind, which Christine Fain was undergoing—but here was the mental piece of it.
“Yes. In the beginning. Not at the end, though. I just knew that he had to die. I didn’t want it for anyone else.”
“Do you have any idea how many people did die?”
She said nothing.
“And it was because of you,” the First Priest said. His voice was grave but his heart sung like the faithful at service. “They died because you let all this happen, and now there’s going to be more death. Your kind—his kind—will never rise again.”
Silence fell on the room, a stark depression that filled the space around Hollowborne and an exuberant happiness embracing the Priest.
“Now,” he said, finally breaking it. “It’s time I learn about your Prophet. I want to know how it happened. I want to know how he avoided detection. I want to know what to expect when the Black decides to return.”
There was a long, long silence. The First Priest thought the mental torture wouldn’t be enough for this one and was nearly ready to let the beatings resume. He thought he might actually enjoy it more than learning about the Prophet.
Finally, though, Rebecca Hollowborne started speaking.
He was young when it happened. Not as young as Abby. I think the Unformed might have learned a bit about humanity with her: that if It picked someone too young, Its chance of success diminished. Perhaps Veritros had been a little bit too old; that’s what I think at least. She was 19, or something close it, and the Unformed can’t morph them as well then. Of course, It can do what It wants for the most part, but there’s still a pliability to the young that lessens with age.
I should begin with my parents. I don’t know where else to start. They were … radicals. Not like me, or any of David’s followers. We weren’t radicals, because whether or not you think what we did was right, there is something behind us. My parents, they just wanted the world to burn.
When I look back at it now, they wanted that more than anything else. They wanted the Ministries to fall. Gods to fall. Faith to fall. They wanted to restart everything and … well, David’s and my own importance was placed after that. They loved us, but it didn’t always feel like it.
David was born in the Old World, though I’m sure you know that now. Our parents were too. I’ve never really been sure why they didn’t stay. It seems that the Old World would have been a more hospitable location for ideas like theirs. Not hospitable, per se, but more so than within the True Faith, if only because of the technological advances here.
And maybe that’s why they came. It wouldn’t be enough to burn the world from a place of relative strength. No, those fools had to do it where the Ministries were strongest.
David was five when I was born. My parents took a lot of steps to ensure that nanotechnology made its way into the womb. I imagine they spent a fortune on not only the procedures, but also keeping it a secret. The three of them, my parents and David—they could be discovered, but if the True Faith had found me, it would have had to keep me as their own. Especially so young.
You could retrain my brain to follow Corinth instead of my parent’s crazy beliefs.
It’s weird, thinking about it now, because David seemed almost expendable. My parents took him from the Old World and brought him to a place where he would never ever fit in, yet when they had me, they went to great lengths to make sure I would at least have a chance of survival if they were caught. But as life went on, I became the expendable one. David … he was the only essential person.
Where am I going with all of this?
I was born, and my parents didn’t even pause in their adventures. They kept on with their radical circles. Once David grew older, he looked into it a bit. I think he was 20 or so. He said our parents were serious about overthrow, and they wanted a two prong approach to it. Education and then violence. Did any of you ever wonder why David waited so long to attack? Especially when Veritros had done it so quickly? She spent five years building her forces and David spent 20. There’s your answer—our parents. I think, in the end, most everything goes back to our parents, though David wouldn’t agree.
He would say we can put everything on them if we want, but it’s us that control our destiny. We’re not programs set at birth.
He told me that before, and I just remember thinking: When you’re screaming and ranting, do you remember our mother? And what about what happened when you were 14—were you not programmed by the Unformed?
None of it matters now.
Goodness, where was I again?
My parents. Their continued push. That’s right.
Much of my earliest memories are of movement. We were constantly moving, and I didn’t understand why. That’s why the compound meant so much to me, because it was a home that we created. A place we would never, ever have to leave—not until the Unformed was ready for it. My parents were always on the run, and whether that was because they were being chased, or only their paranoia, I don’t know. I asked David once if they were on drugs back then.
He said, “I think everyone in those circles used something.”
So it could have been paranoia, at least in the beginning.
Not by the end, though. No, at that point, they were being chased.
I guess none of the rest fucking matters. They were who they were. Bad parents, but … good people maybe? Is that possible? They wanted David and I to grow up in a world that didn’t follow false gods, the same as the Greeks had done at Mount Olympus. And in order to achieve that world, they sacrificed their love for us.
I guess you can divide David’s and my lives into three parts. When our parents were alive. When our parents died. And when the Unformed came.
These are three very separate phases, and if you want to understand who the world followed, then you’ll have to understand those three parts.
Before their death, our life was movement. Fast and without question. My mom controlled everything, including my father. It was her rage that David inherited, although Rhett would probably tell you I got a fair dose of it too.
Eventually they were caught.
David was twelve. I was seven. He remembers it much better than me … or he remembered it.
We were in the north, and by this time, the Prevention Division knew about them. Their names were different than Hollowborne (which is why there wasn’t ever a trigger when you discovered our names). Our parents knew it was over. I used to hear them talking about it.
“We can go to another Ministry,” my father would say.
“No. I’m not running from them anymore. We’re going to make our stand here.”
It was all bullshit. There wasn’t any stand. There wasn’t any movement. There was a damned group of people who talked a lot. All they could do was run.
The house was small and we shared it with two other groups of people. I don’t know if they were families or just shacking up.
Davi
d and I were in the living room when it happened. There hadn’t been anything special going on that day, no reason to worry. The house was calm, though it felt like an underlying thread of panic always existed.
It was clever, how they did it. I didn’t hear a thing. They moved in slow, and their transports’ air propulsion systems became background noise so that we didn’t notice them. Not until it was too late.
“WHAT THE FUCK IS OUTSIDE?” someone shouted.
“THAT’S THEM! THE MOTHERFUCKERS ARE HERE!”
I don’t remember what David and I were doing. Playing some sort of game maybe, but my mother rushed into the living room. I can still see her face as clearly as I see yours now. Her hair was pulled back tight, and her skin was pale except for the top of her chest. Red ran across it, panic blooming inside her.
“Get up,” she said, her voice death’s whisper. “Do what we practiced.”
David stood first and took my hand. We went to the back room. Each of us had a bag ready for something like this, his heavier than mine. To this day, I don’t know what was in them. My mother packed them, and then it would be our job to carry them.
“THEY’RE HERE! LOOK OUTSIDE!” one of the strangers we lived with shrieked.
“DON’T YOU DARE!” my mother screamed back. “KEEP YOUR FUCKING FACES HIDDEN!”
Everything seemed loud, all these people yelling, but only until the voice outside spoke. Until David met the unformed, that voice was the closest thing to God I had ever known.
“YOU’RE SURROUNDED.” The words held no urgency. No anger or emotion at all. “IF YOU RESIST, YOU WILL BE KILLED.”
That was it.
Seven simple words that froze my brother and I—most likely everyone else in the house, too.
Everything burst open at once. I’ve never seen a hurricane, but I’ve read about them, and I imagine this would have been similar. The windows across the small house exploded, glass spraying everywhere. There was only one door to the house, one entrance and one exit. The door flew across the room still intact, and had it hit the far wall, the force would have caused it to splinter.
