Copula Chronicles: The Complete Collection: Origin, Descend, Ascend, Legacy

by Venessa Kimball

  As if his disappearance forces my awakening, I blink my eyes open to a brightly lit room compared to the dim light of my dream. The bedside table lamp is on; I’m standing at the foot of Jes’ bed, dormant from my sleep walk, watching her sleep. Ezra’s suspicion of Jesca’s reaction when she woke had me guessing again. What would she do when she woke? Would she be calm? Cry out? Fight against me? Would we need to sedate her again? God, I hope we won’t have to.

  Would she be able to read me, see that I had seen Ezra and Nate? I would tell her. She needs to know they survived going through the wormhole.

  I look at the clock. It’s still early and the chance of anyone roaming the halls right now is slim. I had to get whatever this thing Ezra talked about in the vision from Sebastian before she wakes up. I should have asked him what it was, but hindsight is twenty-twenty.

  I enter the briefing room where Sebastian is reading documents, and scrolling through a laptop. He takes off his glasses quickly and asks, “Is she awake?”

  I shake my head as I lean against the doorframe. “Ezra and Nate came to me in a vision. They’re alive.”

  He places the glasses down on the table and stares off as he grins. “I should know better by now than to doubt him.”

  I assume he’s referring to Ezra as his looks back at me. “He told you to come for the ants.”

  “Ants?”

  I clear the doorway, unsure of what ants have to do with this “something” Ezra told me to ask for.

  He nods, “Yes, the ant farm.” He rises from his chair and walks over to a door––I assume a closet.

  When he reappears, he’s holding a bag, with tissue paper peeking out of the top. It looks like it’s been wrapped like a gift, which is just as odd as Ezra giving Jesca an ant farm to help her find herself once she wakes. Hesitantly, I take the bag from Sebastian, making sure to hold it from underneath like he is. “So, she’ll know what this means, right?”

  He confirms with a nod. “It holds sentimental value from what I understand.”

  When Jesca starts to stir, I take a cloth and dip it in the basin of water Elicia brought in earlier. As I run the cloth over Jesca’s forehead, she mumbles something that I can’t decipher. But while her words are unintelligible, her thoughts are clear––Nate. Even though hearing her thought of him is a reminder of where her heart lies, I swallow it down and whisper to her, “Wake up Jes.”

  ***

  Jesca and I are silent as we fall into step on our way to the briefing room. The chaffing of our clothes and footstep from our boots are the only sound between us.

  CHAPTER 3: RISKS

  Jesca

  The facility is hospital-like in appearance. Not like the facility I was trained in. I notice a few cracks on the floor tiles as well as in the ceiling. The walls and ceiling are cement, giving them the appearance that this facility is older than the one I had trained in.

  Xander keeps his distance as he walks but offers me some details. “This facility is part of the university above us.” Pointing up, he adds, “University of Kyoto’s Department of Physics.”

  I nod at him and he tucks both of his hands in the pockets of his jeans and turns his gaze straight ahead down the low-lit hall. “It seems so—”

  “Sterile, like a hospital. I noticed that too.”

  Him finishing my thought has me slow my pace. “You heard my thoughts just then. I had my block up.”

  He stops walking and looks back at me. “Yeah, I guess your block is faulty.”

  Feeling defensive, I shoot back, “Yeah, well I guess yours is too.”

  He walks back to me. “What makes you say that?”

  Him bearing down on me is both intimidating and magnetic as his heated energy passes through me. “It’s spotty, but I can read you.”

  I can’t help but question his concern. “What, are you afraid of what I’ll hear?”

  He looks away from me and scoffs, “Afraid? No, I don’t think so.”

  As he walks away, I follow behind him.

  “Could you hear my thoughts just now?”

  He is worried. “No, I couldn’t. I guess I didn’t care to.”

  I did care to, but his shift in being an asshole made it convenient to tell him I don’t. He glances back at me, letting me know he caught the sarcasm then faces forward again and mumbles, “Whatever.”

  As we get to the end of the hall, a door keeps us from passing, Xander pushes a button on the wall. As we walk through the open door, the sound of metal chairs screeching against tile and the team heading straight for us distracts me from the cold shoulder Xander’s giving me.

  I am engulfed in embraces from Elicia, Nick, Jake, Monica, Angela, Luke and Siobhan. Siobhan’s show of affection surprises me, since she’s so tough-as-nails. Glancing beyond them, I notice Sebastian and Balthazar talking with a group of men and women I don’t recognize––all Asian. I assume this is their facility that we have taken shelter in. I glance at Xander, watching him approach Sebastian and Balthazar with question in his eyes. Elicia distracts me, pulling me into another hug. Nick quickly takes up for her mauling me. “She’s been stalking your room for the past two days, Jes. Xander finally eased up long enough for her to leave fresh clothes.”

  He looks sideways at Xander before meeting my eyes. “We’ve all been worried about you.”

  Looking on the rest of the team standing in front of me, I see the concern in their eyes. I clear my throat, the growing dryness working on my vocal chords. “I’m fine, guys, just a little thirsty.”

  My voice sounds hoarser than it did earlier. Jake moves away from the huddle they have formed around me. “I’ll get you some water.”

  Elicia calls after him before he is out of sight, “Something to eat too.”

  As I watch Jake jog off past Sebastian, Xander, and the rest of the group, I hear a baby whimper. The sound is a beacon to a memory in the not so distant past. The flash is instantaneous––Miriam’s face, the baby in her arms, Michael releasing her into the lake over the cliff, my burying my dagger into his chest then diving in after both the baby and its mother.

  Suddenly the whimper becomes a cry. The same cry I needed to calm at the lake. I hone in on the sound as I push past Elicia.

  “Jesca,” she calls to me, worried as I move past her and follow the sound coming from beyond Sebastian, Xander, Balthazar and the group talking to them. Ignoring everything around me except the sound, I part their clustered group to reveal Siobhan holding a bundle in her arms—the small face of the baby squinting and crying.

  Seeing him again is overwhelming as I feel my breath falter with every quickened inhale and exhale.

  Siobhan closes the gap between her, the baby, and me as Balthazar speak softly. “Jesca, this is Marcus, my son.”

  Balthazar’s voice breaks the small spell the baby has put me under and I look up at him. The sadness in his eyes takes me back to the moment when he held his dying wife in his arms. Not able to bear looking at the sorrow in them any longer, I return my gaze to baby Marcus in Siobhan’s arms.

  It’s strange to see Siobhan be so motherly and nurturing with him as she hands him to Balthazar. The shift from her arms to his seems to quiet him. Siobhan’s eyes stay on the baby as she says, “He might still be tender.”

  Tender?

  Xander beats me to the punch as he asks, “Tender? What happened?”

  Did I injure him when I tried to save Miriam and him?

  Balthazar rests Marcus on his chest, letting the blanket loosen around his small barren shoulders. With the short tuft of infant hair, the faint, pink line of scarred flesh is transparent. He was implanted?

  “When?”

  Xander’s urgent question is matched with the flash of concern in his eyes.

  Balthazar lowers his voice as he rocks back and forth, side to side, hushing the baby. “As soon as we got to the
facility we had him implanted. Miriam and I didn’t have a chance to before I was exiled.”

  He looks at Sebastian. “It’s a blessing in disguise that he wasn’t implanted with a Sondian Copula. It takes a toll on the body when extracted. I don’t think I could do that to my son.”

  Tenderly, Balthazar places his lips on Marcus’ wobbling head. “Removal from an infant could be life threatening.”

  I feel my heart clench and guilt burn within me––I couldn’t save her. “I’m sorry, Balthazar. If only I had gotten to her sooner—”

  His voice quivers as he looks down on me, “You saved my son, Jesca. You did everything you could. Nate, we, did everything we could to save her.”

  All of a sudden, Balthazar looks at each of us standing around him. “Miriam and I were colleagues when we first met. I had just instituted the fellowship and she was introduced to me by a then trusted colleague.”

  I can’t help but notice Balthazar’s lips thin momentarily before he continues. “She agreed to go to Sonde with the rest of our growing team. She was a brilliant geneticist and I was thrilled to have her with us.”

  Balthazar looks down and lightly rubs Marcus’s back. “We fell in love and secretly married in London on one of our return trips from Sonde. We kept our relationship quite until she became pregnant. Questions began to arise, especially from the executive board––Michael Sanderson.”

  Saying the name of his wife’s murderer visibly pains him as he pauses before continuing.

  “He noticed Miriam’s demeanor change as the pregnancy progressed and it wasn’t long before she started to show. He wanted to know who the father was, demanded it. Keeping our marriage hidden, Miriam told him that the father was a man on earth, not related to the fellowship.”

  Balthazar shakes his head. “Even then she knew that disclosing our relationship would not bear well for her, the child or me. Miriam and I both agreed that she should ask him if she could be sent back to London for a safe delivery of the baby and to be with the child’s father. When she went to the board, they denied her request and Michael told her that she would have to deliver our child on Sonde. We both feared that the baby wouldn’t be able to survive on Sonde, its body so small and not adapted to the atmosphere. We had never tested a human birth there––it could very well be murder.”

  His voice quakes as he reflects on the memory. “I told her I would go to Michael and tell him everything––about our marriage, about this baby being ours, but she begged me not to. She said she didn’t trust what he might do to us once he found out. We were torn and our son surviving Sonde was our only prayer day in and day out.”

  Balthazar breathes in deep and closes his eyes as he recalls the events. “I told her after he was born, I would find a way to get her and the baby back to Earth. Marcus was delivered and as we held our breaths, he took his first and lived. The staff delivering him had concluded that in utero, he had somehow adopted Miriam’s adaptations to Sonde. Michael wasn’t convinced and wanted to run more tests, keeping both Marcus and Miriam out of my reach for an escape. I returned to earth days later to finalize preparation to bring Marcus and Miriam back to Earth. I couldn’t bare Michael running some fucking tests on my son, treating him like some kind of experiment!”

  As I look down on the baby in his arms, I can’t imagine him being prodded and poked by Michael and his staff without Miriam putting up a fight. I suppose that’s just what she did when she escaped into the wormhole that brought her here and, in turn, brought Michael here after her. But why? Did he learn that Marcus was Balthazar’s? Is that why he wanted both Miriam and the baby dead?

  Balthazar’s continuing, interrupts my train of thought. “That was the day I traversed to Sonde and discovered Michael’s intentions for the fellowship. Experiments, alterations, genetic mutations, I had never fathomed. They stripped me of my Copula implant and sent me back to Earth.”

  Balthazar covers Marcus’s back with the blanket, keeping him from the chill in the air as he shifts him from his chest to cradle him in his arms. I can’t help but move closer, wanting to look at Marcus’s small face and all the details that make up him. I feel Xander hovering close behind me as Balthazar whispers, “When I read you—envisioned Miriam in the woods, Marcus, being chased, I knew that she found a way to escape and save herself and our son from him.”

  As I continue to watch Marcus, his eyes moving under the delicate eyelids, his small grunts as his lip twitches, I wonder what adaptations he had received that helped him survive on Sonde and then again here on Earth once he got here. He was crying so badly, like he was being hurt. Was he? Was the atmosphere of earth torture for him since he was born in the Sonde environment?

  Reading my mind, Sebastian speaks, “When we got here to the facility, we ran tests on him. His pulse, his breathing, it wasn’t normal. We took blood samples, ran every test we could to rule out that he was––not viable for this world.”

  Balthazar interjects, “It was possible that due to his adaptability to Sonde, he was unable to survive here on earth––alien to the environment.”

  Monica rests her hand on Balthazar’s shoulder and interrupts, “We couldn’t wait any longer to implant him with the altered Copula. With me as a viable guinea pig, and knowing we could alter what his body would accept as a source of life with the new Copula, we had to do it.”

  I had forgotten Monica had been the experimental implantee of the altered, new generation Copula. “Allowing us to slowly alter him to match our environment to his needs.”

  I look up from Marcus to Monica to confirm my laymen’s interpretation. She nods, then looks down at Marcus as Nick chimes in, “Just baked extra fast, huh, Marcus?”

  I don’t understand Nick’s comment, but it seems like Elicia does as she elbows him in the ribs.

  “Ouch. What, babe? I’m just joking.”

  I look at Balthazar with curiosity, “What does that mean?”

  Sebastian takes up explaining as Balthazar continues to rock Marcus side to side. “The pregnancy was not a typical human gestation period. Due to the Sondian environment affecting Miriam, it in turn affected Marcus, hence the carry-over of so many adaptations to Sonde’s atmosphere.”

  Sebastian glances at Nick, giving him a reprimanding glare. “So, yes, he was baked faster than a normal child.”

  I try to overshadow Nick’s comment by looking down at Marcus sleeping in Balthazar’s arms. “Either way, he’s beautiful and a miracle.”

  I find myself wanting to touch him and I rest my hand softly on his chest, just to feel the rise and fall of him breathing. I can’t explain it, but it brings me peace.

  “Do you want to hold him?”

  Balthazar’s question is unexpected as I pull my hand away and tuck it under my other arm across my chest. Marcus is peacefully sleeping. “I don’t want to wake him. He seems content in his father’s arms.”

  “Oh, it takes a lot to wake up this kid during the day. He’s a night owl. Aren’t you Marcus?”

  Before I can ready my arms, Balthazar is leaning toward me to place Marcus in them. Like the baby has a tether attached to Siobhan, she’s next to me, ready to help if I need it. “Hold his head.”

  I nod as the weight of the baby’s head rests in the crook of my forearm. Jake’s voice carries over Siobhan’s shoulder as he steps into view. “Yeah, Siobhan and I have night duty with this little dude.”

  I wince, remembering that he’s just been implanted and where he lays on my arm could hurt his neck. I shift him a little in my arm so his head turns to me. “I don’t want to hurt his neck.”

  Smoothing his blanket, I tuck it under him with my other hand and limit the contact of my arm to his skin. Balthazar reassures me, “You won’t, he’s tough, like his second cousin.”

  That’s right, he is my second cousin. My mother was Sebastian’s niece. Marcus lets out an embittered grunt and I intuitively hush h
im. “Shhhhh, little guy. It’s all right, I’ve got you.”

  Eyes still closed, Marcus’ scowling face relaxes and he stretches, arching his back and lifting up from my arms. I hold him tight, but give him the room he needs to stretch. He slowly settles back into the crook of my arm and releases an audible breath from his small parted lips. His every movement is a miracle in itself and I can’t contain it as I smile and look up at Balthazar. “He’s strong too.”

  He nods with pride as any father would. And in my moment of joy and bliss, I glance at all of my friends sharing in the moment, but keep my eyes on one pair longer than I should––Xander’s.

  “Just like his cousin.”

  His words are unexpected, just like the locked stare we are in and the heat rising on my skin.

  Needing to break the cycle, I look back down at Marcus to distract me as Sebastian speaks.

  “What do you remember?”

  With his simple question, the images come fast––Running through the woods, Michael materializing, Miriam being stabbed, stabbing Michael, surfacing with Miriam and Marcus. It all comes in fragments different every time I remember it––Nate and I ‘jumping’ through the woods, seeing the battle between Sondians, Dobrians, creatures, giants passing through the vortex, Nate and Ezra taking Sam into it. I close my eyes and whisper, “I remember all of it.”

  I don’t deserve to be standing here holding this baby while my father and Nate are God knows where. I should have let Sam take me into that wormhole, if it was even really Sam. Michael’s face––it shifted in Sam’s. What if he somehow took over Sam?

  “Jes.”

  Siobhan’s voice has me refocus on her as she says, “It’s time for him to go down for a nap. I’ll take him.”

  With trembling hands, I let her take the baby from my arms, then cross them over my chest to hide the tremors of fear they’re revealing. Sebastian watches me cautiously as he asks us to take a seat. “Did you find Michael’s body?”