Lilith

by Toby Tate

  Phillips sat up in his chair. “Part of the media group? Who is it?”

  “It’s a woman that goes by the name of Julia Lambert. But that’s not her real name.”

  “What is her real name?”

  “Lilith MacIntyre.”

  Every eye in the room fell on Mac. He frowned and nodded slowly.

  “Yep.” he said. “She’s my sister.”

  CHAPTER 39

  “So there’s a terrorist onboard my ship—your sister, no less—and you didn’t warn me?”

  Mac sighed. “I wasn’t sure exactly why she was here. But that’s what I came to tell you about. There’s much more to Lilith than meets the eye. She’s dangerous. I don’t know what she’s planning, but I know it can’t be good. Not only that, she hates me. Ever since I left home to join the Navy she’s hated me. She feels like I’ve betrayed her somehow and now she wants revenge.”

  The CO sat back in his chair. “You said there was some kind of virus taking over the crew. You never said anything about your sister.”

  “That’s the thing, sir. I believe she’s the one behind the takeover.”

  Phillips raised a brow. “How could one person take over the entire crew of a U.S. Navy supercarrier?”

  “Believe me captain; you don’t know what she’s capable of. You saw Commander Jeffries. That stuff that came out of his body is like a parasite, a living organism that controls the will. And she controls the parasite. Once a person is infected, it can be passed on, usually through sexual intercourse. I remind you that the same thing also happened to Seaman Blount.”

  Jessica squirmed in her chair. “I can tell you, sir, it’s not a pleasant experience. I did things that I never would have done otherwise. I’m sure I did a lot of things I don’t even remember.”

  “So you’re saying these infected people can only pass on their…infection…through sex?” Phillips asked MacIntyre.

  Mac shook his head. “No sir, it doesn’t have to be through sex, only bodily fluids. A kiss or even sweat would do it. But sex makes the victim more open to the transfer and more vulnerable because they’re completely relaxed and have their guard down. But mainly, well…for her, sex is addictive, like a drug. That’s just the way she prefers to make the transfer. But without a host, the parasite dies quickly.”

  Phillips glanced at Jessica. “So how was Seaman Blount here able to get the parasite out of her system?”

  “Extremely strong-willed people are harder to control,” Mac continued. “At some point, she must have realized what was happening to her and when she did that, the parasite was automatically cut off from its source—her brain.”

  Awkward silence.

  Mac shifted in his seat. “Sir, maybe I need to give you a little history.”

  “I wish you would.”

  “Have you ever heard the legend of the Lilitu?”

  Hunter, Blakely and Sammy all perked up at the sound of that word.

  “What do you know about the Lilitu?” Sammy asked.

  “More than I care to. When we were young, our father used to tell us stories about demons that would come in the night and steal away little human babies, leaving demon babies in their place. I thought they were just make-believe, just scary stories to tell little kids. My father died from a stroke when he was only fifty and my sister, my mother and I inherited his estate. Part of that estate included a diary that my father kept and which my sister and I read. He wrote in that diary that he had uncovered ancient church documents while researching our ancestry in Scotland which proved that he, Lilith and I were descendents of a race of beings called Lilitu. We thought he was crazy, believing his own fairy tales. But my sister decided our father wasn’t crazy, that the stories were true, and she set out to prove it. She began researching the legend and discovered that she was able to tap into something, some supernatural power that had survived in her—in our—chromosomes down through the centuries. Our father knew that it had survived, but only needed to be reawakened. He even named my sister after the very first Lilitu, the one that legend says was the first wife of Adam, before Eve came along.

  “Jewish folklore says that Lilith, Adam’s first wife, was created at the same time as Adam, but she refused to obey him and left the garden. She was supposedly cursed by God. But according to the Sumerian and Babylonian mythology, which predates the Jewish legend, she was the mother of demons—a succubus. According to myth, female Lilitu have sexual relations with men while they sleep and steel their semen so they can give birth to their demon children. God sent three angels to go and try to bring Lilith back, but she refused. The angels retaliated by killing a hundred of her children every day until she returned, but instead of giving in, she continued to give birth to even more demons.”

  Mac gazed around at all the eyes staring back at him. Hunter thought he looked like a prisoner on trial.

  “When we were children we lived in Indianapolis. One day, when I was seventeen and Lilith was seven, we had gone for a walk to the grocery store. We took a shortcut down an alley that we had taken a hundred times before, but this time a pack of wild dogs cornered us between the buildings. There was no way to escape and even though I was scared shitless, I was determined to protect my little sister.

  “In less than thirty seconds, Lilith had those dogs cowering like little puppies and running away with their tails between their legs. Then she acted like nothing had even happened.”

  Hunter could sense that the man was telling the truth. At least he believed he was.

  “As we grew up, I saw her do incredible things. There’s another name for the Lilitu: storm or wind demons. I once saw her create a storm that spawned a tornado in the middle of a cornfield. A huge, black cloud billowed up out of nowhere while she stood there staring at the sky. A wall cloud came down and formed a funnel cloud so quickly I thought we were both dead. When the tornado got too close, she waved it away and the whole thing just disappeared like a drawing erased from a chalkboard.

  “I tried to tell my parents about it, but Mom thought I was crazy and Dad actually encouraged Lilith. None of my friends believed me. I even started to doubt my own sanity for a while. Lilith told me stories about the different powers she had discovered, all the things she could do. She tried to persuade me to join her, to help her, but I was afraid of what that power was doing to her mind and I didn’t want any part of it. I wanted to be human, not superhuman.

  “When I graduated high school, I got into the Naval Academy and Lilith ended up at Indiana University in Bloomington as a biology major. She stayed on as a research assistant for a while and began studying her own cells on her off time. What she discovered was amazing.

  “Human cells contain a certain number of chromosomes: forty-six to be exact. A female has twenty-two pairs of autosomes, plus two X chromosomes. But Lilith discovered she actually had a forty-seventh chromosome. Not a copy, but a new chromosome unlike any of the others. She named it the Lilith Chromosome. She believed it gave her power—supernatural power.

  “Then she started that…organization. She became more and more prone to violent behavior. I believe she may have even contacted other Lilitu. Eventually, I went to the FBI with it and they took it to the CIA. I guess that’s one reason she hates me, considers me a traitor.

  “After the hurricane appeared, I saw her here on the ship and I just got a bad feeling. I couldn’t prove anything, but somehow I knew Lilith was involved.”

  “What got her into this anti-military thing?” Phillips asked.

  “When she was ten, a drunken sailor hit our dog with his car and killed it. She was never the same after that. She had always loved animals, anyway. Lilith once told me that if she had the choice between saving a baby or a puppy from a burning building, she would save the puppy. That’s just the way she is.”

  The room fell silent and Hunter could hear the hum of the ship’s generators from the engine room far below.

  “There are a few other things you need to know about Lilith, captain.”
<
br />   Phillips arched his brows. “Like what?”

  “For one thing, she’s strong. Incredibly so. I’ve seen her lift up the front end of my stepfather’s Mercedes.”

  “Mac, I gotta tell you I’m having a hard time buying all this,” Phillips said.

  “I understand, captain. But you have to believe me.”

  “What about Alex?” Hunter asked. “Why hit the city with a category five hurricane?”

  “To help create confusion and chaos. Also to get the Ford to go where she wants it, which is right here. I believe that she intends to leave the ship at some point and go into the city. Right now it’s vulnerable, which means the people there will be easy prey.”

  “I have a way to put a stop to this once and for all, captain,” Sammy said, his hands still cuffed behind his back.

  “You mean with that little potion of yours? First, I need to know exactly what that stuff is and where it comes from before I let you go sticking needles into my crew members.”

  Blakely cleared his throat. “Um, actually captain, the CIA created that potion,” he said.

  CHAPTER 40

  Julia Lambert/Lilith MacIntyre was enraged. No matter how hard she searched the stateroom, she could not find her flash drive. Shredded pillow down floated in the air and the contents of both her locker and Lisa’s locker littered the floor. She punched the side of the steel rack and dented the frame, leaving her knuckles bloody. But the pain helped her focus.

  The only explanations were that she had either misplaced the flash drive or it had been stolen. Lilith doubted seriously that she would have lost it. The contents were much too sensitive to be so careless. Yet she had been careless enough to let it get stolen. The most likely suspect was that bitch roommate of hers, Lisa.

  On top of that, two of her “slaves,” the young seaman and the doctor, may have been freed from her control somehow. Things were not going according to plan. She would have to accelerate events somewhat. Lilith took a deep breath and thought about what she had to do. The ship wasn’t sitting pier side as she had hoped, but it was inside New York Harbor, so her plan could still work. There were many crew members on board passing the parasite from host to host. Even if the senior officers had figured out what was happening, it was too late to do anything about it. The sex had been fun, enthralling, exhilarating…but soon, she would own them all.

  And then there was her darling big brother John—the asshole. Joining the Navy and being sent to this carrier was probably his lifelong dream. But it was the perfect setup for her. She could kill two birds with one stone. In fact, she could kill many, many birds.

  But the first thing she needed to do was to appease the hunger inside of her that had grown since she had boarded the ship. It was almost to a crescendo now, crying out with an insatiable appetite that demanded to be fed. This was something that she hadn’t understood before, but now that she was here, she knew what had to be done. It was time to begin the change, to facilitate the metamorphosis.

  And to do that, she would have to go deep into the bowels of the G.R. Ford.

  CHAPTER 41

  “What do you mean the CIA created it? Are you telling me that my chaplain is in cahoots with the CIA?” Phillips asked, sitting up in his chair and nearly shouting at Blakely now. Hunter couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  “He’s been working with us, yes. We pulled a few strings and got Commander Crane transferred to the Ford when we realized what Lilith MacIntyre was up to. We were monitoring her Internet usage as well as her personal laptop computer, phone calls, text messages and other things.”

  Blakely surveyed the room.

  “Sir, a lot of what I’m about to say is highly classified. Maybe we should discuss this in private,” he said.

  Phillips leaned closer to Blakely, folding his hands on his desk.

  “Mr. Blakely, everyone in here has top secret clearance. I really don’t think you have anything to worry about except for the two civilians you brought along with you.” He nodded toward Hunter and Lisa.

  “Captain, I brought them along because Ms. Singleton has uncovered some information that may have given us the upper hand in this case.”

  “What kind of information?”

  Blakely reached into his shirt pocket and produced the flash drive that Lisa had given him.

  “This contains files with lists of the ship’s crew, their jobs on board the ship, diagrams of the engine room and the power plant, including details of the reactors and probably many other interesting things. I haven’t had time to go through it all yet, but I’m sure we could find out a lot more about what she’s up to by taking a look at it.”

  Lisa piped in with her observations about Lilith. “She keeps very irregular hours. I’ve only seen her in the stateroom two or three times and I spend a lot of time there. Nobody takes that long to do interviews.”

  Blakely nodded. “We were monitoring Lilith’s organization for some time when she dropped out of sight. Then, by the time we figured out she was using an alias, she had already gotten her way on board the Ford.”

  “And how did she manage to do all that without the CIA picking up on it?” Phillips asked.

  “We haven’t exactly figured that out, yet. But one thing we can do is hack into EVE’s mainframe computer. That would probably give us a lot of information.”

  “Can you do that from here?”

  Blakely grinned. “Captain, we’re the CIA.”

  CHAPTER 42

  Captain Phillips had Sammy released under his own recognizance and sent Johnson off to find Lilith and bring her to his stateroom for questioning. Blakely passed the agent on his way through the door into the captain’s quarters, carrying his MacBook Pro. Hunter sat with Lisa on the vinyl couch and watched as Blakely stopped in the middle of the room and inspected the captain’s dining table with its red vinyl table cloth.

  “Mind if I borrow your fine dining area?”

  Phillips shrugged. “Be my guest.”

  Blakely plugged the AC adapter into the nearest receptacle and set the laptop up on the table, then plopped into a chair as the others in the room gathered around to watch the proceedings.

  “I’m obliged to remind everyone that everything that happens in this room stays in this room,” Blakely said. “Understood?”

  “What happens in the Navy stays in the Navy,” Hunter quipped and Lisa lightly elbowed him in the gut.

  Blakely plugged the wireless adapter into the USB port and the light flickered to life. Not surprisingly, after entering his password, the first thing to pop up on the operative’s screen was a giant blue CIA logo with its eagle profile and shield. In front of that, several icons began to materialize with names and acronyms that Hunter had never seen.

  Blakely clicked on an innocuous looking icon that opened into a blue screen with several open fields like a search engine and typed in something that looked like another password, all in asterisks. The screen went blank again and opened into a screen with more open fields across the top and several buttons down the side filled with acronyms. Blakely began typing in words in each of the fields and after several minutes the screen blipped into yet another screen, this one with a realistic painting of a raccoon wearing a shirt and tie, a possum wearing a blazer and several other animals dressed as humans and standing around a steel cage filled with tiny, naked humans. The humans had their hands on the bars and were looking forlornly out from between them. Above the drawing were the words “Ecological Victims of Evolution.”

  “Looks like we’re through the firewall,” Blakely said.

  Seeing the picture on Blakely’s screen, Hunter said, “Reminds me of Planet of the Apes, but with little furry animals instead of big monkeys.”

  “Monkeys aren’t apes,” Lisa said. “Monkeys have tails.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Couldn’t you just access the site through the Internet without using a hack?” Mac asked.

  “No, I need to access files through their mainframe that wi
ll probably be encrypted, so that won’t work. We just need to hope that they don’t have another program that can detect us. If they do, they’ll shut down the system and we’re screwed.”

  Blakely used various tools to gain access to encrypted files, zipping through them as if it was second nature.

  “Did you learn this at hacking school?” Phillips asked.

  “I shouldn’t even be letting any of you see this,” Blakely said.

  Hunter was mesmerized by the man’s skill. “Can you guys really access people’s computers that easily? Makes me a little nervous about all that porn I have on my PC.”

  Lisa elbowed him again, a little harder this time.

  Blakely said, “Let’s check out a few of her e-mails and see if there’s anything interesting in there.”

  A Microsoft Mail window popped up followed by a string of e-mails.

  “Geez, she doesn’t clean out her inbox very often,” he muttered.

  He moved the mouse around and began clicking on various e-mails, read the contents and closed them after finding them of no interest. He opened an e-mail file marked “keepers” and did the same. Blakely continued this for over an hour, opening and closing e-mail files while most of the others in the room finally got bored and began watching TV or going for coffee on the mess deck.

  When all the e-mail files had been searched, Hunter saw Blakely pull Lilith’s flash drive out of his pocket and plug it into the USB port on his laptop, then click on the “F” drive of his Mac.

  “I’m looking at the dates these files were last modified,” Blakely said. “All the dates on the files are within the last few days, meaning they were last modified, or received, since she has been on board the ship.”

  Blakely sat back in his chair and sighed.

  “Captain, I can only draw one conclusion from the fact that Ms. MacIntyre hasn’t received communications from anyone with access to secret or confidential information. It means she probably got it after she arrived on the Ford. It could have come from Jessica Blount or any number of people. There’s no way to know. But I do know one thing.”