Seal One

by Sara Shanning

  He thought about escape. For both of them. Every possibility he had come up with wasn’t feasible. All of them required a fluke to happen. He felt trapped. He didn’t want to be a pawn any more.

  He had thought about his knowledge of God, and found it lacking. Alric knew the basics: a Savior dying for his people on a cross, the Ten Commandments, the prophesied end of the world. Had read words that he realized he had never put much thought into.

  He wondered if, on the other side of the wall, Eve sat and thought the same things as he did. If she thought about what she had been taken away from. He was curious about her. Did she have a family? Friends that she missed? She was a strange child, from his small window of observation. He hoped that whoever had taken care of her had loved her and treated her well.

  Frowning, Alric contemplated whether her calm acceptance of her circumstances was learned behavior. Perhaps she had suffered. Did suffer. Was that what God asked of those He called to His side?

  Alric wished he had his bible. He hadn’t had one in his possession since he had moved into his apartment. He remembered packing it, but it hadn’t been among his things once he’d been settled in, at least that he could find.

  Sighing, and rolling his neck, Alric stood and walked to the wall that bordered eight. He listened, and placed a palm flat against the white panels, wanting to feel the same connection as before.

  “Eve?” he said aloud, even though he knew she couldn’t hear him through the walls.

  Shaking his head at how ridiculous the thought of her hearing him through walls was, he paced, agitated. The air and the space were suffocating. Being alone was soul wrenching. Tilting his head back, Alric fought his unsettling emotion.

  He blamed her, even though it hadn’t been her fault. He had never once made a close or lasting bond. It had always been just him, trudging through life singularly for as long as he could remember.

  The people around him had never been his friends. There had never been a connection he had made that had changed who he was or affected how he made his choices.

  He had felt needed when Eve had wrapped her small arms around him. Like, for once in his life, he had something viable to offer to another human being. What, he had no idea. He didn’t feel that they had been given enough time to find out.

  He thought they had bonded. Instantaneously. Deeply. It was foreign to him, but clear. He would fight for her. Not just because she was a child that needed protection, but because in some way they were tied together by something greater than themselves.

  He felt his spirit telling him that it was a gift. One Alric knew that he did not deserve. He had been fighting God for most of his life.

  “Ohhh,” he breathed aloud. Scientific probability. His choices dictated the likelihood of the outcome. Had he made different choices, it was possible that he may have encountered her in his past. Found that connection earlier.

  Perhaps he would have crossed paths with Eve before she had been kidnapped, and been able to save both of them from Xis. Possibilities that he could no longer affect cycled through his mind. The space seemed smaller as he resumed his pacing, his movements quick and sharp.

  “I’m such a fool,” Alric muttered. “I’m supposed to be intelligent. I can create life-saving formulas, but I can’t figure out my own life.”

  He wasn’t defeated. Not yet. He was still alive. Eitan was a good guy. It was possible that there was still a chance.

  Alric stopped pacing, and rubbed a hand over his heart. The question of whether he was an angel or not surfaced. He thought about the angels filling the room with Eve. The one who stood with Eitan. From the recesses of his brain, he recalled the Bible saying angels were ministers and protectors.

  Angels did battle. They fought for God. For the Chosen. And he had been chosen, hadn’t he? Weren’t the bones on his back a sign of that? The one truth he held tight to? God had chosen to reveal His presence to him, to mark his body so that he would never forget.

  When had he ever done anything for God? He asked for help constantly. Tried to do things for the greater good.

  “For the grace of God we shall unite.” Alric repeated the words Eve had spoken to him. For God. ‘For’ meant intended to be given to. Having a purpose. As a result of.

  He had done none of those things. He had given nothing back to God. Alric had searched for his own purpose, but hadn’t looked at it as not actually being for him. He had done nothing as a result of the bones on his back, except hide them. He had lived a solitary life and told no one that God had cared enough about him to prove His existence.

  Alric sat on his bed, and thought about what giving oneself over to God looked like, felt like. What action did he need to take? What process did he need to follow? He spun theories in his mind. As far as he was aware, God followed no method that he could observe and analyze.

  “Ask and you shall receive,” Alric said aloud when the verse popped into his head. He lay back.

  He had always feared the things that he saw happening, that seemed to erupt from his mind and take over all of him. Was that why for so long he had never looked deeper at the meaning?

  He listened to the sound of his breathing, the stillness of the room around him. He had no right to ask God to come to him now. He had always believed he was in control, but his current situation proved that he was not.

  Alric didn’t feel worthy. He wasn’t special. Just like everyone else, he was fixated on his problems, his comfort. Frustrated, Alric shifted restlessly. This was who he was. What he had chosen to become. He berated himself. He was nothing more than a minion to an evil man. How could God forgive that?

  Like a vortex, the thickness that had always seemed to be the permeating feature of the beginning of his visions pulled at him, rising up from his weakness and pushing his deepest fears to the forefront. He was not enough, it told him.

  Alric clenched his fists at his sides. He pressed down into the mattress, and clamped his teeth together.

  The darkness was greedy. It pulsed in his temples and pounded in his heart. Alric felt the rush and swirl. Fighting fear, he frantically murmured prayers that ran together in an unintelligible garble, forgetting that he had just determined all he ever did was ask God for things.

  The room imploded and he stood on rocky crumbling ground. White frocked lab techs lifted vials full of blood toward him that began to overflow, coating the fingers that held them. Alric jerked back, looking around.

  “Makar?”

  More of them appeared all around him, holding out the blood like a taunt.

  Looking down, he watched the blood puddle and swell, rising quickly to drown out the earth below his feet and flow around his ankles. It was thick like mud, and warm, but chilled him all the way to his bones.

  Like a living, wicked thing, it lapped at his skin, eroding the surface, stinging as it sought its way into his veins. It made him feel foul. He worried that it would infect his soul.

  Shaking his head in denial, Alric looked around for a place to run. He was finding it difficult to breathe, air was escaping his mouth in strangled gasps.

  A bank rose above the blood in the distance. Alric lifted a foot to move, but the earth sucked at his shoe. He pulled it free, and grimaced as he found placement again in the muck. His leg brushed against something and Alric looked down.

  A body surfaced beside him in the swelling river. Blood eased away from the features of the face and he saw Eitan’s open lifeless eyes crying tears of red, his chocolate skin smeared with death, his throat gaping, the blood lapping at the exposed wound to make it seem fresh again.

  “No!” Alric cried out, reaching down for the man he had hoped would help him gain his freedom. Another body bumped into Eitan’s form as he grasped a slick rigid arm. Long hair floated against the slippery arm he held, the tendril spreading to paint red with red. Alric shook his head, tears splashing into the sea of death as he looked into the face of a woman he did not know.

  He pulled Eitan with him, the shifting of th
e water bringing more bodies to the surface. The bank did not get any closer. Muck tugged at his feet and the bloody sea rose higher to lap at his knees.

  Why had they killed Eitan? He shouldered his way around the army of techs. None tried to stop him.

  His breath was painful in his chest as he trudged forward. His knees ached with the effort of each step. Alric forced Eitan’s body to his other side, the strength gone from the arm he had been using.

  He shoved bodies out of the way. They were multiplying, hindering him more than the sucking mud that dragged at his feet. The land was no closer. It was hopeless.

  He was fighting a losing battle. Was that the answer God was giving him? That only death waited in his future? That he had ignored the chance he had been given? Did God mock him now?

  “God, what do you want me to do?” Alric shouted.

  He panted, crying, chest heaving from exhaustion. He ached inside. God suddenly seemed so far away. Unreachable. Was this how people felt when they thought God had turned his back on them?

  Several yards in front of him, a dark head rose from the red water, the thickness of the blood coating the features and sluicing off hair as the figure rose higher to reveal a face. Eyes blinked open, chocolate and gold. Eve.

  Blood poured down her small body. She wore the white garments Xis supplied. The wet slickness scrambled away from her, sucked in beneath her feet until she alone, stood on a dry patch of ground, facing him.

  The blood was at his waist level now. Movement sapped the last of his strength. Pulling a body only made it harder. Feeling torn, Alric looked down at Eitan’s prone body, then back up at Eve. Regret washed over him as he let go of Eitan. There was nothing he could do for him. His soul was gone from his body.

  Eve held out her hand. Instantly, his fear died. Her calm confidence flowed into him. His doubt bled out. When he took a step forward this time, it seemed easier. Her eyes did not waver; those orbs of confidence were out of place in one so young, but they drew one in and inspired trust.

  He held her gaze, blocking out everything else as he took step after step. Finally reaching her, he placed his hand in hers. His skin tingled where their palms met. Her grip was strong. The blood drained away from him at the contact, leaving him on dry ground as well.

  Past her, beyond the reach of the bloody water, barren land stretched out, devoid of life. Not a single tree or blade of grass was visible.

  Around them, the multitudes still stood, blood pouring from the vials, drowning them in it.

  Alric started toward the bank, stopping to look at Eve when she did not follow. She tilted her head slightly as she regarded him, her hand holding his gently.

  “Do you see, Alric?”

  Looking at the death around them, Alric shook his head. “What am I meant to see?”

  “Inside of you, the truth has always been there, if you would only surrender to it.”

  “What truth? What am I surrendering to?”

  Eve let go of his hand, reached out and touched a finger to his chest directly over his heart. “You are chosen. You need not fear the God that chose you.”

  Tears welled, distorting his vision. Alric rubbed them away, staring at the white wall of the inside of room seven.

  He was still crying when Makar came in. Embarrassed, Alric sat up and composed himself.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Makar was nice enough to busy himself getting out supplies. Finished with the reading and blood draw, he motioned to the door. “The lab is waiting,” he said quietly.

  Alric rose to follow, wondering how Makar had ended up in Xis. He didn’t seem to possess the sociopath tendencies required of most Xis lower level employees. Raul would have mocked him mercilessly.

  Upon entering the lab, Alric busied himself with the blood samples. The variant of tests they had been running hadn’t come back with enough differentiation to lead him down a specific path for an answer.

  An idea had been tugging at the back of his mind, but he wanted to finish the scope of tests he had already set out first. Not in the mood to talk, he was glad when Makar let him have his silence while they worked.

  Later, he heard the guard summon Makar over, but continued peering into his microscope at a slide until he saw Makar next to him out of the corner of his eye.

  “Eitan sent these down.”

  Alric scrambled to control his excitement when he saw his glasses and data screen. Makar set them down on the counter.

  Seeing them, he felt like God was speaking to him, telling him that He had a plan, reminding him of the last words spoken to him in the vision. The sight of them gave him hope.

  “I didn’t know you wore glasses,” Makar commented.

  “I do. They’ll make things easier.” He picked up his data screen. “This too. I actually have a lot of my past research on here that might help me identify if anything is different in these blood samples. I did a lot of blood testing in the early stages of the hydration pod. It’s all filed away on here.”

  Having the data screen in his hands excited him. Eron was suddenly just a few clicks away, and Makar had been giving him enough space that he didn’t think it would be too difficult to send another message.

  “So do you want me to start working on something else?”

  “I don’t think that’s necessary at this time. I’d like to read through some of my documents and refresh my memory. See if I can find anything helpful.”

  “Sure, no problem.”

  Makar left Alric to it without more questions. Alric breathed a soft sigh of relief, clicking the data screen on. It had enough power to accomplish his purpose. Picking up the glasses, he fumbled, dropping them onto the device in his hands to open the secure channel.

  Deliberately, he angled his body so the screen was hidden from any of the cameras in the lab, hunching his shoulders slightly over it as added protection as he shoved the glasses into place.

  He accessed his documents in case he needed to swap screens quickly, then he fired off a message to Eron. Eitan had provided him this opportunity and he wasn’t going to ignore it. He refused to believe that Eron had less power than he hoped.

  His message was quick, but as full of information as he could make it. ‘Held captive in Peep Hall at Xis. Room seven. Russia. Can you extract? Eitan is only good guy.’ He didn’t know what else to say. He would have to trust that Eron would do his research.

  Alric switched over to his notes and quickly began skimming through some of his documents to refresh his memory on the testing he had done extensively on blood during the first stages of the hydration pod. He had wanted to be sure it didn’t change the effect based on variations in blood types.

  The thought had come to mind and he’d been pondering it, wishing he had his records. He thought it could be a strong possibility that he and Eve shared a blood type that was uncommon.

  If God had been trying to tell him something from the beginning, then he had to consider the possibility that there were seven people in the world that were markedly different from the rest of the population, set apart by bones on their backs and the blood coursing through their bodies.

  “Yes, this is it,” he said to himself, shifting his eyes back up to the top of a document to read more closely.

  He had discovered during the hydro pod testing that there were more than the four common blood types that most people possessed. There was a spectrum of rare blood types as well that were rarely talked about.

  Testing for blood type was done by taking samples of blood and mixing them with antibodies to see if it clotted. If it did, it was called a reaction and the owner was then assigned a specific blood type.

  It felt right. Alric did a quick search for the steps to the test that would familiarize him with the process. Setting down his data screen, Alric slid his chair down the counter and removed a vial of blood.

  “Makar, do we have antigens stored here to do ABO typing?”

  “Uh yeah, we do. What are you thinking?”

  Alri
c dotted a slide with three droplets of his blood. He murmured a thank you when Makar set down the antibodies he needed. The antibodies would either attack A and B blood and cause a reaction, or they would not. The third was the Rhesus factor, which was nothing more than a protein that attacked red blood cells, but could cause serious problems during a pregnancy, so it was a standard test.

  Using a dropper, he mixed one drop of blood with the A antigen and one drop with the B antigen. The third drop he mixed with the RH factor.

  It took seconds to confirm his initial thought. Neither the A or B samples stuck together, as was typical.

  To be certain, he ran the test again, with the same result.

  To confirm, he began the test for Reverse typing. Alric labeled tubes as A and B and added two drops of serum. Into each, he added a drop of the antigens and mixed them well.

  Carefully, he got up to put them into the centrifuge at 1000rpms for one minute. Removing them, he shook the tubes and examined them for agglutination. There was none.

  “Hmm,” Alric murmured as he documented his results.

  “Did you find something?” Makar asked.

  “I think I’m on to something, yes.”

  Makar examined the section of tested blood on the lab counter. Alric watched him, waiting to see if he came to the same conclusion he had.

  “I can’t say I’m surprised,” Makar said finally. “The both of you are unusual and I’m annoyed it didn’t occur to me that your blood type could possibly be rare. Especially considering how much I’ve handled your blood.”

  “Makar, do you have full access on the lab data screen?”

  “Yes, I do. All secure.” Makar sat in front of the screen and looked expectantly at Alric.

  Jotting down the name of a database that documented case studies of rare blood, he slid it over to Makar. It wouldn’t hurt to keep the tech busy. There were things he wanted to search for without anyone looking over his shoulder.