by C. E. Smith
I jumped the last five feet and felt my ankle give way beneath me. My shoulder slammed into a tree, and I groaned. Debris fell on top of me as he continued his way down. I had to get out of there. Using the tree for support, I pulled myself upright and tested my ankle. Searing pain shot up my leg, but I knew I didn’t have a choice but to keep moving. As best I could, I half ran, half limped back to the path that would lead out of the woods.
Behind me, I heard his feet hit the ground and start running. I knew I couldn’t outrun him with my ankle like that, and I felt him launching into me. In a tangle of limbs, we both hit the ground, and he tried to roll me onto my back. My hands fumbled around for anything, anything, that I could use as a weapon. My fingers curled around a rock about the size of a baseball, and I swung. A sickening thud told me that I’d hit my target.
He fell away, and his hands flew to the side of his head. I came up on my knees and swung at him again, and he fell to his side. A third time, I struck him in the same spot, and this time his hands dropped.
"I told you to leave me alone, asshole." I pulled my arm back to aim one last time, and I saw his blank eyes staring into oblivion, his body motionless. Blood ran down his temple and into his eye. He didn’t blink.
My eyes fixated on his, and I began to tremble. After a moment of nothing, I dropped the rock and crawled backwards. My chest was rising and falling rapidly, and I feared my heart would explode.
Oh my God, I just killed a man.
Oh my God.
I stared into his empty eyes. Now he would simply cease to exist since he was without an Essence. He was just gone.
A twig snapped somewhere nearby, and I searched the darkness as I sucked in a breath. My stomach dropped as I looked around, but I saw nothing. I could feel eyes on me from somewhere, but I couldn’t tell where they were coming from. I stumbled to my feet, pain shooting through my leg. I’d already forgotten that I was injured. I tried to keep it as still as I could while I hobbled down the path.
I just need to get home. I need to get home and pray and forget this ever happened.
I still felt someone or something watching me as I slowly made my way through those woods in the darkness. It was slow going between not being able to see and my ankle not fully supporting my weight. I was determined to avoid imagining who or what was watching me and tried to focus on the path ahead. Seeing what might be watching me was not at the top of my priorities list at the moment.
It took a while, but when I reached the edge of the trees, I no longer felt the eyes on me. My heart began to slow, and I let out a deep breath. I wanted to sit for a moment but figured it would be better to get home and put some ice on my ankle. I wondered what time it was; I didn’t even have a watch so I couldn’t gauge exactly how angry mother would be. I could only guess that I’d been gone for a few hours and didn’t want to think about what was waiting for me at home.
As I drew closer to my house, I saw a black van parked out front.
Who the Hell would that be?
A knot formed in the pit of my stomach, and the urge to run poured over me.
But run where?
I settled on creeping around to the side of the house to peer into the kitchen window, but before I could get there, I heard something smash inside.
By reflex I jumped and landed too much weight on my bad ankle. I cursed under my breath and placed a hand on the wall to steady myself.
Stumbling the last few feet to the window, I held my breath. When I reached it, I peeked in just enough to see, hoping they wouldn't catch a glimpse of the top of my head. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, between two men dressed in black combat gear. The each had an "E" stitched on their upper arms in gold thread. One of the men was pointing a gun at her.
My heart thumped violently inside my chest.
I could see tears running down her face.
"How do you not know where your own daughter is?" one of the men asked.
She bit her lip and shook her head. "She was supposed to be home hours ago. Something must’ve happened to her. She just went for a walk, and I don’t—". The interrogator backhanded her across the face, and she let out a whimper.
I sucked in a sharp breath as instinct urged me to do something to help her. Something shattered upstairs, probably from my room.
Another man yelled down the stairs, "She ain’t hiding up here." His heavy footsteps thumped down the stairs, and he came into the kitchen. "But take a look at this, Joph." He passed something to the man that had been interrogating my mother, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Joph turned back to my mother, a small black box in his hand with the lid open.
"What is this doing in here?" he asked as he stretched the box out to my mother.
"What is it?" she asked, narrowing her eyes to see it.
"This, is Edyn’s chip. It’s supposed to be implanted in her arm right now. Can you tell me why this is here?" He bent over and put his face right in front of hers.
Oh, shit.
I should've thrown that damn thing away when I first got it. They’d used it to track me, but when they didn't find me, my mother had to pay the price. Guilt soured my stomach.
My mother stared at the chip. "I… I… I don’t—"
Joph snapped the box shut and tossed it onto the counter.
"We’ll just have to ask her, I suppose. I’m a patient man. I can wait all night. We’re not leaving just yet in case she does come home since we can’t track her now." He glanced at the man that was holding the gun, then turned back to my mother. "The boys and I are hungry. Why don’t you fix us something while we wait?"
My mother shook her head again and didn’t make eye contact. "I don’t have enough to feed all of you."
The man that had been searching upstairs opened the refrigerator. "Sure you do. There’s just enough in here for the three of us."
"That’s all our rations until Friday. We won’t have anything left to eat."
Joph laughed. "Your daughter won’t be needing any, and you’ll survive without until then. Now get up or Dirk here will shoot you in the foot."
I inched away from the window, not wanting to watch any more. Of course I didn’t want my mother to die, but what could I do against three armed men, even if I hadn’t been hurt? I heard a glass smashing inside and my mother whimpered again. Squeezing my eyes tight, I inhaled. The same instinct that came over me when I first approached the house doused me again.
Run.
"I’m going out for a smoke," one of the men said.
"Shit!" I exhaled and tried to hobble around the side of the house as quietly as I could.
I have to get out of here.
I had no clue where to go, but I knew it just had to be away from here. I heard the back door slamming behind me, but was out of the line of sight. Making my way across the neighbor’s yard, I took one step on my bad ankle harder than I meant to. My knee hit the ground on the edge of their sidewalk, and I could tell without looking that I had busted it open. I held my breath as I forced my way back up onto my feet and kept going. At the end of the street, the light from the bus stop flickered. I was only a few hundred feet away from it at this point. I needed to put some distance between myself and those men. I’d figure everything out after that.
When I reached the side of the street across from the bus stop, I closed my eyes for a moment.
"Dear Lord, I don’t know what time it is, but please let a bus come soon. Please get me out of here and keep my mother safe."
I hopped on my good leg across the street. My ankle couldn’t take anymore. Instead of sitting on the bench under the light, I went behind it and sat in the shadows so no one would see me. A few minutes later, I heard an engine coming from my street.
Oh, please don’t find me.
I peeked around the bench and saw the black van approaching the stop sign. It appeared the passenger seat was empty, so the other two men must still be at my house still. The van took a right and kept going. I exhaled, not
even realizing I had been holding my breath. My gaze followed the van, and I saw headlights coming towards me.
Praise God.
I hesitated a moment until the van was farther down the street before I stood up.
The bus slowed to a stop, and the doors opened. I tested my weight on my ankle again, and not surprisingly, it still couldn’t handle much. I limped to the bus doors and hauled myself up the steps. Collapsing in the first available seat, I put my head back against the window, as the bus pulled away from the curb.
3
T houghts swam around my head.
Who were those guys?
What did they want with me?
Who was the man that attacked me earlier?
What the Hell is going on, and why is all of this happening to me?
I tried to focus on my breathing and calm down, my adrenaline fading with each passing moment as the bus took me further and further away from the house.
My mother.
I remembered that she was still in the house at the hands of those men and it was all because of me. My heart quickened, and my breathing shallowed again.
Lord, please don’t let them hurt her.
For a moment, part of me thought that maybe it was time for her to receive some of the same treatment she’d given me, and that just maybe those men would give it to her, but I quickly dismissed the notion. No matter what she had done to me in the past, I still didn’t want her to get hurt.
Or killed.
I rode the bus for a while, thinking about my mother, and what I was going to do now.
The Circle.
Immediately that man's mention of the place came back to me. If people didn't know what I was, would I be safe there? At this point, what did I have to lose?
I recalled a brief conversation with a lady at work about the Circle. She said her son lived there to avoid having his hand amputated as punishment for stealing a couple of apples from their neighbor's tree, and he had found someone in a run down Church that took him down there. Christchurch Presbyterian, I think it was. If I could find my way there, maybe I could get to the Circle and away from those men. I knew the Church was close to the hospital which was on this bus route.
After some time, the bus driver pulled to another stop.
"This is the last stop on my route. You’ll have to get off here." he said.
I looked out of the window and saw the Piedmont Atlanta Hospital to the right.
Thank you, Jesus.
An overflowing trash can was standing beside the bench at the bus stop. I could hear a dog barking somewhere in the distance.
"Hello?" he said.
"Sorry," I said, smiled meekly and stood up, rotating my ankle to test it out again.
I wasn’t sure why I kept doing that. I guess I was just hoping for a small miracle. Using the rails to support my weight, I made my way down the steps with little pressure on my foot. The trash can reeked, clearly having sat full for too long, and a grimace spread across my face. I looked around, only having a vague idea where to go now. The bus doors closed, and the driver inched away from the curb.
I was alone. Maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. I needed to find the Church and get to a place where I could lay low for the night and rest my ankle. Icing it was now out of the equation unfortunately. I peered at the hospital, dreaming about ice packs and pain pills, but knew I shouldn’t go anywhere super public right now.
As I walked in the direction of the Church, I became lost in thought, reliving the nightmare the day had been over and over. I wondered how much of a blessing my Essence really was. It only seemed to cause trouble.
Maybe if those stupid scientists hadn't found our souls, I wouldn't be in this mess.
Souls weren't the original target of the government's research. The government wanted to find out why some of the faithful had been left behind, and researchers had assumed at first it was a genetic abnormality, but had another theory as well regarding mental capacity. Many test subjects were more than eager to help contribute what they could to the research out of fear that they wouldn't make it to Heaven, and of course for money. They wanted an answer as much as anyone. It was their eagerness that led to the discovery of souls.
Part of the research at the time involved testing healing abilities to see if the human mind was powerful enough to control healing. The scientists hypothesized that if certain minds were strong enough to affect healing, perhaps it was the weaker minds that prevented people from having souls. When incisions were made in their arms to observe healing rates, some of the test subjects took it to the next level. In their fervor to increase their healing rates, they actually forced their souls out through the wounds. The researchers hadn't been able to determine if there was a link between mental strength and souls, but they had discovered them nonetheless and managed to develop a test that every child was given at six months old to see if they had a soul or not.
As they continued studying souls, they found that they could be taken by force with the right drugs. There was a rumor that there were certain blades that would extract the soul on contact when they sliced open a person's skin, but I had no idea if that was true or not.
Once it was discovered that souls could be taken though, crime rates skyrocketed. Insentients everywhere were desperate to get their hands on them, and the government really had to come down had to control the situation. Even though they were ruling with an iron fist, it was still dangerous for Quintessents like me.
About five miserable minutes of heading down the street, I came to a dilapidated stucco building. A sign on the side was missing a couple of letters but once read: "Christchurch Presbyterian". Some of the windows had been replaced with boards.
I almost cried with relief.
When I reached the doors, I placed my palms on them and took a deep breath. God must’ve had me in His favor then because the door creaked and opened as soon as I tested it. Moonlight filtered through the remaining windows, casting a dim display on the pews. I made it to the pew closest to the door and found it at least still had a cushion.
This’ll work.
I sat down on the pew and propped my bad foot up on the end to elevate it. Falling back on the cushion, I felt safe for the first time since this afternoon, before I’d fallen asleep on the rock. Sleep didn’t sound so appealing after that, even though it pulled heavily at my eyelids.
Somewhere a door closed softly, and I stared at the ceiling. My breath caught in my throat as I listened for another sound. I didn’t dare move or make a noise. Slow footsteps approached from the front of the church.
What do I do? What do I do!?
I squeezed my eyes shut, hoping that maybe whoever it was would leave me alone. What else could I do? I couldn’t run. But maybe it was the man I was looking for? The footsteps stopped at the end of my pew, and a man cleared his throat.
"Excuse me, miss. Are you alright?"
I opened my eyes, and he took a step back.
"I’m sorry, I don’t mean to frighten you." He stared down at me wearing a concerned expression.
I studied him for a moment before responding. "Yes, I’m… Well…Not exactly, but I suppose I’ll survive."
The man was an older gentleman, perhaps in his fifties, adorned in a button down shirt with a frayed collar and jeans.
He clasped his hands in front of his stomach and gave me a sheepish smile. "You’re not from around here, are you?"
I shook my head. "I just needed…" I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to reveal to this stranger.
"To go somewhere safe?" he finished for me.
"Yes. It hasn’t been the best day."
He extended his hand to me. "I’m Samuel."
"Edyn," I said. He seemed kind, but something felt off. I kept my guard up as I shook his hand.
"That’s a lovely name. Oh dear," he said glancing down at my knee that was covered in dried blood and illuminated by moonlight from a nearby window.
"Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. The
lighting makes it look worse."
He held something back for a moment, examining my knee before catching my eyes again.
"How much do you know about this part of town?" he asked.
"Umm. None, really."
"Mmm. And I take it that your really bad day involved running from someone, and that’s how you ended up here?" His gaze was questioning, and there was something in his eyes. In the darkness I couldn’t place it, but something seemed odd.
Maybe I was just paranoid from the stress of today.
"Have you ever heard of the Circle?" he asked.
Nodding quickly, I said "That's why I'm here. I'd heard there was somebody here who could help me get there."
"Do you mind?" He gestured at the pew next to me.
"No, please sit." I pulled my leg off the end of the pew and grimaced as I set it down, the pain temporarily overriding my apprehension.
"Is your knee hurting?" He asked. His tone seemed genuine, but something else was hidden there. I just couldn’t place it. He remained standing.
I guess he didn’t want to sit after all.
"Not really, it’s my ankle that’s really bothering me. I fell earlier and landed on it wrong. I think it’s sprained, and I haven’t exactly stopped using it today."
"I have some Tylenol in my apartment and might have an Ace bandage there too. It’s not terribly far from here if you would like to come with me." He held out his hand to help me to my feet.
I hesitated, not sure if trusting anyone was a wise idea, especially after today, but what else could I do? He was the man I was looking for that would get me safely to the Circle.
"I promise I don’t bite," he said with a smile. "And besides, I’m fifty-seven. I’m not exactly strong anymore."
"Do you live in the Circle?"
"I do."
I turned his words over in my head.
"How much do you know about the Circle?"
"Not much other than it can be a safe place for people in hiding," I admitted.
He turned to face me and nodded. "The Seventh Circle in a nutshell is where we all live out of sight from the government. It’s a huge network of tunnels that run under the city. It started out in the tunnels from the old MARTA subway system and has expanded from there. It’s easiest though to just let you see it."