The Fall: Sanguine Series: Book One

by Chris Laughton

  The last few weeks had been a whirlwind. They spent almost every waking moment together, learning about each other. Not much in the way of their past experiences, as Rebekah was reluctant to discuss much of her past this early in the relationship. Besides, she felt like a different person around him, the person Gwen had always wanted her to be, so there wasn’t much point in him rushing to learn about her old self. No, they spent their time just learning each other’s personalities, their likes and dislikes, and how to make the other one smile. There was a familiarity between them, like an old married couple, but there was still so much they could do to surprise the other that it was truly the best of both worlds: a new, exciting relationship with the comfort of an old.

  They’d visited plenty of places around Seattle that had been tourist attractions in their day. Now they stood more as monuments to the decadence of the past, but the two of them didn’t see them that way. They saw them as new experiences that they could share together. The ruins of the Space Needle, the crumbling husks of the old sports stadiums, and many walks along Elliott Bay, just talking. It was the happiest she’d ever been, and as soon as Gwen cooled down enough to meet with her, Rebekah was sure she’d see the change Mason had helped bring about and forgive them both.

  Still, the fact that he lived in a hotel, gave this whole relationship a very temporary feeling that she was trying to ignore. He’d told her that he didn’t actually have a permanent home, that he just sort of moved between hotels as his job took him different places, but that only made him seem less tied down. She knew he didn’t mean anything by it, but eventually, one of them would have to address the elephant in the room of him what happened when his job took him elsewhere. For now, though, she was content to lay with her head on his chest and listen to his heart beat.

  thump.

  It was such a loud noise when she was this close that it almost startled her.

  THUMP.

  Wait, there was a long time between the two of those noises. That couldn’t be a good sign. She lifted her head and looked at Mason to be sure he was alright.

  “Is something wrong?” he asked, looking confused.

  “Nothing,” she said, and laid her head back on his chest.

  thump.

  There was that same gap.

  THUMP.

  He certainly seemed to be fine, and it seemed like a strange thing to get worked up about. She chided herself. She had gone from homeless drug addict to living in a ritzy hotel and yet she was worried about her rich boyfriend’s weird heartbeat. Maybe he was just in phenomenal shape. He certainly had the body to show for it…

  Although it seemed like it had been a long time since she had heard anything. She tried to think of how long it had been and adjusted her head slightly so she could see the clock on the nightstand. If each time the dots between the numbers flashed was a second, it had already been six seconds just since she’d been counting.

  thump.

  OK, now she knew something was up. This wasn’t just her imagination. It was two seconds just between each half of his heartbeat!

  THUMP.

  She sat up in bed and looked at him. He gave her the same confused look.

  “What is going on with your heart,” she asked plainly.

  A look of relief passed over his face. “Aw, that. Yeah, my heart beats a little slower than most people’s. Been that way since I was a kid. It’s no big deal.”

  “No big deal?! There’s a long enough pause in your pulse that I’m fairly certainly you’re clinically dead between each heartbeat.”

  He laughed. “Now you’re being dramatic. Look.” he held his arms out to emphasize his point, “Not dead.”

  He was smiling at her, but she didn’t think this was a laughing matter. He had the calm demeanor of someone who knew much more than they were telling you. “You can’t laugh this off. You know this is weird.”

  He leaned up on one elbow in bed to be closer to her. She had backed away from him slightly in defiance of him stonewalling her. “Alright, you want to know?”

  She nodded.

  He sighed. “You’re going to need to get dressed for this,” he said cryptically.

  He climbed out of bed and went over to his closet and pulled on a pair of sweatpants.

  “Are you stalling?” she asked him, brow furrowed.

  “No, I promise. Now get dressed. Nothing fancy, we’re just going to the fitness center.” He still had the calm, but now with a hint of annoyance, like explaining this to her was all rather inconvenient. He was pulling a plain t-shirt on, but no shoes.

  “The fitness center? First of all, what the hell is that? And second of all, can’t you just tell me why your heart’s so weird?” She was nervous. This felt like a moment with a clear before and after. Like everything in their relationship would hinge on this and would either have come before this moment or after.

  He chuckled, “It’s just the hotel’s gym, sweetheart. And trust me. I will answer any questions you have, but first, you need to see.” He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and walked to the door and turned to wait for her. She was still for a moment before deciding that whatever this was, she trusted him. She pulled her clothes back on, and walked barefoot to join him at the door. He put his hand on the door’s handle, then stopped.

  “There’s no one else in the entire world besides me that knows what you’re about to know.”

  She locked eyes with him, but she couldn’t tell anything from the look he was giving her. “You’re kind of freaking me out.”

  “I just want you to know that it’s a big deal for me to show you this,” and with that he opened the door.

  The two of them walked to the elevators, where Mason swiped his phone over the panel to bring it to them. Mason walked immediately to the third door out of four. They waited in silence as she could hear the hum of the cars behind the elevator doors, hear as they went up and down, slowed and began to move again. The bell and light on the third door dinged as the doors opened. Lucky guess?

  They entered, and Mason swiped his phone again, hitting the floor for the fitness center. She watched him as they rode down, but he just stared straight ahead. His whole body seemed tight. Whatever was about to happen, whatever he was about to show her, it had him very nervous. She felt the elevator car slow and stop and the doors opened onto a small staging area with glass walls looking into the fitness center. Rebekah hadn’t seen anything like this outside of the movies. Through the glass, she could see a row of treadmills and a row behind that of benches with racks of free weights, and a row behind that with plenty of exercise machines that did God knows what. To the sides there were tumbling mats for floor exercises and a water dispenser in the corner. The idea that people would use machines to run in place inside was the ultimate in pre-Fall opulence in her mind. Of course, this was post-Fall, and Rebekah could see from here that seemingly every third machine had an “Out of Order” sign on it. There were also spaces between machines where you could tell something used to reside, but the staff had apparently given up on ever fixing it, and had discarded it.

  Mason stepped out of the elevator, not waiting to see if she followed, and walked to the glass door, swiping his phone again to open it. He held it open and looked back at her. “Coming?”

  She walked past him into the gym. “I didn’t know there were still places like this,” was all she could say.

  Mason stopped to appreciate it with her. It obviously wasn’t something he had thought of himself. “There probably won’t be for much longer. All the parts to keep these machines going are running out. And it’s not like we’re making any more.” He ended their moment of reflection and walked to the nearest working treadmill.

  She scoffed. “I don’t understand how going for a run is going to explain anything to me.”

  He gestured at the console. “Just watch.”

  Begrudgingly, she walked to where she could see the display. It had a rather large touchscreen that dominated most of the console. This mu
st have been a pretty new model when The Fall happened. He tapped the screen and the machine hummed to life. Stepping on the belt, he pushed a few buttons and began walking, then jogging, then running. He never stopped pushing the up arrow and just kept running faster and faster, until the console protested with a beep that this was the best it could do. She moved to the side to see around him. He was running at twelve miles per hour. She watched the console for a while, while he ran. He was looking down at her, his face the picture of serenity. “Why don’t you grab a cup of water?” he asked, without a hint of exertion in his voice.

  The room was walled in mirrors, some cracked, but it meant it wasn’t hard for her to watch him as she walked to the water dispenser and grabbed a cup to fill with water. He was right, she had been a little thirsty, and she took a sip walking back to the treadmill. She was starting to realize what Mason had been getting at. He was still at a dead sprint, but he hadn’t broken a sweat. He wasn’t even breathing through his mouth. She waited a while until she got bored and looked at the console again. He’d been running for a little over five minutes and gone more than a mile. He reached to the console, and slowed it down until he could easily stop it. Stepping off the treadmill, he told her, “Alright, listen to my heart now.”

  As she put her head to his chest, she noticed he was still breathing easily and didn’t have a single drop of sweat on him. She listened carefully, hearing the same loud thumps, with the same gaps in between. Perhaps it was going slightly faster, but she’d need a clock to tell the difference. He’d proven his point, but this was leaving her with more questions than answers.

  “I don’t understand,” she said simply and truthfully.

  “I could show you similar things if we went to any of the weight machines, bu that’s not the point. There’s something else I want to show you,” he said taking out his phone. He made a few taps on the screen and turned it around for her to see. On the screen was a video of an intersection.

  “I’ve seen this already,” she told him. “Gwen showed it to me. It’s crazy. The guy just walks away.”

  He turned the phone back to him and tapped the screen to stop the video. Putting it back in his pocket, he said, “Yeah, that hurt. A lot.” He grabbed the cup of water from her and took a sip.

  She could feel the blood drain from her face and she instinctively took a step back. “That was you?! But that happened the same day we met!” She was frantically looking around the room, remembering that day, trying to fit this new piece of information into that timeline. She remembered the suit he’d been wearing at lunch, and realized it match the one from the video. “That’s not possible. We went to a movie that night! You were fine!”

  She was on the verge of hysteria. He obviously hadn’t expected her to take it like this and was trying to calm her down, putting the cup down in the cup holder on the treadmill behind him and putting his hands on her shoulders. “It’s OK. I’m still the same guy you know. We can take our time while you adjust to this, but this is my big secret. I heal very quickly. I’m a little faster, a little stronger and my senses a bit keener than most people. My body works a little differently. That’s all. It doesn’t change who I am, or what we share. I’ve been like this since I was a kid, but as I’ve gotten older, it seems like it’s getting more… pronounced.”

  “How?” She had to sit down. Her head was spinning. She wound up taking a seat on the belt of the non-working treadmill next to the one Mason had used.

  “I don’t know. My parents weren’t like this. As far as I know, nobody else in my family is. But I know that the government and the corporations would love to find out, so I don’t exactly advertise the fact. And that video going viral was not the best thing for my stress level.” Mason took a seat across from her on his treadmill.

  “So my boyfriend is a super hero,” Rebekah sighed. “When were you going to tell me?”

  “I don’t know. I know it’s cliché to say this, but I wanted to tell you. It’s just tough to bring up, ‘By the way, I might be a demigod.’”

  “So what does this mean?” Rebekah asked. She futilely wished things could go back to how they were an hour ago. She wished she’d never heard his stupid heartbeat. She knew it was ridiculous to wish her boyfriend had kept lying to her, but there it was. She was simultaneously glad that he trusted her with this, and overwhelmed. She had enough on her plate being back in a city where she knew exactly where the closest place to buy heroin was at all times.

  “Hopefully nothing. Hopefully the video fades from everyone’s mind, and nobody is looking for me. I’ve been keeping an eye on it, and there are a lot of people who think it was faked. There are enough people lying about being there and what happened that plenty of others don’t believe any of it.” Mason took her hand after a pause. “I know it’s a lot to take in. I’ve had my whole life and I’m not totally used to it yet.”

  “What about kids? Can you even reproduce with a human? Do you age? How old are you?” she had too much on her mind to phrase her questions politely, or even wait for his answers.

  “Well for the first three, I don’t know. When it comes to that sort of thing, your guess is as good as mine. And I’m thirty-three.”

  Rebekah realized she’d always assumed she was a little older than Mason, just based on how young he looked. Turns out, he was six years her senior. They sat in silence for a moment, before Mason said, “This doesn’t have to change anything.”

  She patted his hand and smiled grimly. “It changes everything.”

  22

  Trevor was sitting, yet again, in the back of their van. At least Jackson had done the driving this time, but still, when this was all over, Trevor was going to swear off vehicles for a month. At least he was in slightly more comfortable civilian clothes this time. He sat across from Aidan, who was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt under a bomber jacket with sneakers on. It seemed strange to see him out of tactical clothing and combat boots. He was resting his head against the wall of the van, eyes closed, but Trevor knew he wasn’t sleeping. The man might sleep through briefings, and he might appear to be off in his own world, but when he had a job to do, his focus was always on the mission, and they were on one now. Still, Aidan’s haircut and accent (international travel was rare enough to be noteworthy) would have made him a little too memorable, so Trevor was handling the legwork on this one. They had used Dr. Monroe’s compass to track their target through Seattle. From there, it was easy for Trevor to get in an elevator with him, get off on his floor and see which room he went to. Trevor had gone to the front desk and asked them for the name of the man in that room, which they of course refused. He replied that he could always just wait for the man to come downstairs again and introduce himself, but he’d rather just pay them to save him the trouble. He had been genuinely surprised when they kicked him out. It was, however, somewhat comforting to know that there were still places where social propriety ruled, although that sort of decency probably cost quite a bit.

  It had turned out that no bribe was necessary. By tailing him a little longer, they had seen him sign the visitor’s log at a building he was apparently working in and Trevor had simply gone in to read the name: Mason Rayne. Maya had known the guy’s name after all. Trevor didn’t know why he was surprised, but it was startling to get confirmation that she was that gifted. They’d run an internet search, but they’d found nothing noteworthy: no immediate family, and no apparent government connections, meaning they were in the clear to apprehend him. If he had been connected to the government or one of the more prominent corporations, it wouldn’t have stopped them, but they might have proceeded with a little more caution. Instead, they were waiting in the back of their van in an alley with a set of shackles firmly secured to the new bench they’d installed at the front of the cargo area and only their sidearms on their persons; not the rifles they were used to. Trevor had traded his usual tactical jacket for a plain black t-shirt, but kept his usual pants and boots.

  They had noted that Mason was a c
reature of habit. He ate breakfast at the same restaurant at the same time every morning, and should be passing their van on his way there in just a few moments. Dr. Monroe had warned built this man up enough that it couldn’t hurt to be too cautious, so they would catch him before he had the energy of a meal in him. Still, Trevor appreciated a man of routine and it felt somewhat hypocritical to take advantage of that. At least his conscience was clear: he had decided that regardless of what happened today, Mason would walk free. Witnessing Simone and Dr. Westfield’s argument, he had quietly sided with Simone, but had still thought that orders were orders. Now, he’d seen this man in the flesh. He was an actual person (if not a normal one), instead of just a topic of conversation. Sitting in the van now though, Trevor realized that killing this man was a line he simply would not cross, regardless of the order Dr. Westfield gave. This man had done nothing to earn a death sentence, hell, he hadn’t even done anything to involve himself in their conflict.

  The platitudes that Trevor himself spewed to new recruits about this being for all of humanity had felt suspiciously hollow lately. He had no doubt that he was on the right side, merely that perhaps not everyone involved in The Project was a pillar of virtue. It was a crisis of faith that had been brewing for some time and was easy enough to ignore while in action, but when he had only the inscrutable Aidan for company, and nothing but time on his hands, it was easy for it to come into view. This wasn’t a day job for Trevor, it was his entire life, and when you dedicated that much of yourself to a cause, you needed to believe in its righteousness. The idea that he had perhaps, at some point, followed orders that were more concerned with advancing the cause than doing the right thing was troubling.