by David Beers
The First Priest nodded, still looking out the window. “There’s some truth to that, I suppose. I mean, 16 hours ago, I pissed myself while watching that woman almost kill everyone. I’m not trained in anything having to deal with other Ministries. Yes, inside the True Faith, I’m revered, but outside … Well, I guess my reputation isn’t known.”
“Nor is it wanted,” the woman said.
Another nod from the First Priest. “Perhaps you’re right.” He turned to look at her. “A day ago, I thought I was going to die. And a week before that, I thought the same. Ever since the Black returned, I’ve kept thinking I was going to die, and not just due to paranoia. I keep getting placed in real positions where death is probable. Yet, Trinant, I keep living. And now, I’m here, in front of you, still alive. You may not fear me, but what you’re not registering yet, is that I am the High Priest. The True Faith, and everything it controls, is at my beck and call.”
He quit talking and stared at the woman in front of him. She looked younger than him, though he didn’t know if that was her actual age or some kind of aging technology. Most of the women that came and went through this room looked younger than the First, so perhaps she was as ancient as the High Priest.
Older or younger, she would need to treat him as an equal from now on.
“Are you threatening me?” Trinant asked.
“No. I want you to see things clearly. Now, again, I’d like to discuss what’s to happen with the True Faith’s High Priest.”
She was quiet for a few moments and the First could tell she was weighing his words. Finally, she said, “What do you want to happen with him?”
The First Priest smiled.
Travel inside the Globe of One was ridiculously awkward. In the True Faith one went up or down by either machine or stairs.
The Globe of One—as with all of the One Path, the First was quickly discovering—wanted nothing so simple.
The orb was massive, and the ‘elevators’ (the One Path called them swings, though the First didn’t see the connection) existed on the outside. They didn’t go up and down, though, but rather spun around the globe, descending or ascending in a rapid circle. Depending on how far up or down the globe one needed to go, you might spin around the damned thing twice.
And then when you got to the correct floor, you still had to walk toward the center, if that’s where your destination was.
The First Priest hated it, and was quickly coming to despise everything in the One Path. They could have simply created elevators, but just as their arrogance refused to let them live on land, they also refused simpler methods for more difficult ones.
The First Priest stepped off of the ‘swing’, an aide exiting after him. Trinant, in another snub, had sent the First down with one of her assistants rather than coming herself—he knew that if it had been the actual High Priest making this trip, she would have been here.
No matter, he thought. I’m here, aren’t I? And she’s listening to me. She can have this snub. She’ll keep learning the truth.
The First Priest followed the aide for another minute or so and then they stopped in front of a black door. The hallway was long, crossed on either side by others, but the First stood in front of the only door he could see.
“He is in there,” the aide said, stepping to the side.
“Thank you. When I’m finished, how will I summon you?”
“I’ll be here,” she said.
The First nodded. “Your manners are much better than your Minister’s.” He stepped forward, but halted just before banging into the door. It hadn’t opened. He looked to his left. “What do I do?”
The aide smiled. “Just keep going.”
The First’s brow furrowed and he looked back at the door. He shook his head and stepped forward hesitantly, expecting to hit his forehead on it, but as he touched the surface, he moved through it.
The door didn’t disappear, but remained, and the First felt like he was stepping into black oil. He quickly jerked back, his hands reaching for his face to rub the slick substance off—
He touched only his skin.
“Just keep going,” the aide said again, still smiling. “You’ll come through clean on the other side.”
The arrogance of these damned people, the First thought. He looked at the door and with a quick step, moved through, the oil washing over his skin for a brief second, and then he was through it.
He stopped the moment he cleared the door.
The High Priest hung before him, and it was …
Glorious.
Praise be to Corinth, it was glorious.
Whatever the door had been made out of, it seemed to fill this entire room except for a narrow strip of about five feet in front of the wall. The door had been opaque, but here the First Priest could see through the black substance, and it appeared to give off an almost golden glow. Five feet separated him from the black liquid, and then another foot from where the High Priest hung.
He was suspended in it. Naked.
Unable to move.
The First looked to the High’s left and he saw someone else, further back, and higher up. The First expanded his vision, trying to take in the whole room. Prisoners, everywhere, all of them floating in that black liquid/solid creation. The rest of the prisoners were further back, the High being the only one so close to the barrier.
The First realized that if he’d come for someone else, that black substance would have pushed them closer, while making sure the High remained deeper inside the room.
The First Priest, unable to help himself, smiled.
Glorious, he thought again.
“We give thanks,” he said, not casting his eyes down this time.
The High stared at him, his skin taking on the golden hue of the black liquid, finally his pale color cast away.
“We give thanks,” he said, though his mouth didn’t move. The substance spoke it, the entire room taking on the High’s voice.
They’re reading his mind, the First thought.
“This is an interesting predicament,” he said.
The High chuckled, his voice coming from every molecule of liquid in the room. It was loud, though not overbearing. His face was slack, none of the emotion from his laugh affecting his features.
“It’s going to get more interesting,” the High said.
“Is that what you think, Most Holy?”
“Did you see her? Did you see what she did?”
The First nodded, his eyes widening. “Oh yes, Most Holy. I saw completely. She nearly killed everyone, and from the reports I heard, she nearly wiped out the entire One Path, although now I think that might not have been such a bad thing.”
“That wasn’t supposed to happen,” the High said. “Something else interrupted the plan.”
“Oh, is that what happened? The plan?” the First said. “I’m not sure how much you can actually understand anymore, Most Holy, but the plan was insane. You were trying to contact the Black, and somehow thought you’d be able to control everything. It turns out, you couldn’t.”
Another chuckle.
The First didn’t like it. The man was trapped inside a liquid, unable to move or even breathe normally, and yet he was laughing.
“Have you found her?” the High asked.
“Your want-to-be concubine? No, not yet.”
“I thought that would be true … Has Corinth come to you yet?”
The First finally laughed and looked down at his feet. “No, Most Holy, Corinth hasn’t visited me. He hasn’t told me to move away from the True Faith, nor to kidnap some mutant from another Ministry. He hasn’t told me to contact the Black. To tell you the truth, Most Holy, Corinth has been rather quiet as of late.”
He looked back up into those unblinking eyes.
“I saw him again.” The High’s voice sounded distant now, the liquid somehow able to register that he was thinking and not talking directly to anyone in particular. The First couldn’t begin to understand the technology beh
ind this, but the moment he returned to the True Faith, he’d start trying to replicate it. “He showed me Veritros’s head again. Do you remember her … Rachel Veritros?”
“I’ve listened to you talk about her for a long time, High Priest. Since all this started you’ve droned on and on about her, about being lucky, about us not being lucky again. Do you remember saying all of that?”
The liquid made no noise.
“Veritros is dead. Has been dead 1,000 years. You are insane, you old fool. Corinth showed you no head, and Veritros has nothing to do with any of this. I won’t hear any more about it.” The First stepped forward so that he was mere inches from the black liquid. The High was slightly higher than him, and the First looked up so that he could see the High’s eyes. “I’ve made a deal with the One Path, my High Priest. I’m giving you to them. Trinant One seems like a real bitch, but in return for their recognition of me as the High Priest, I’ve said they can do what they want with you. I don’t know if they’ll keep you suspended here forever. Maybe they’ll kill you. I don’t care in the slightest, just so long as I never have to sit in that black box and talk to you again. Goodbye, my High Priest. Forever.”
The First left the room without another word, not waiting to hear anything else from the man he had followed for most of his life. He moved through the liquid door and didn’t look back.
The High Priest slowly started sinking deeper into the liquid, a sucking sound echoing through the room as he did.
He said one last thing before being walled off in his new cell, his voice just managing to rise above the sucking noise.
“They never found Veritros either. Just like Nicki.”
The Pope looked at Daniel Sesam and his heart hurt. Yule had seen much suffering in his life, and he was careful about questioning God when he saw such things—but this time, he nearly did it.
The two of them were inside the Globe of One, Yule having made the trip to retrieve Daniel and the other man that had traveled with him. Yule wasn’t yet sure how he would deal with Jackson Carriage, but there would be plenty of time to worry about that later.
It had taken Yule a day to get here, first needing to ensure the Old World wasn’t affected by the gray explosion across the sky, then travel time.
He’d come, though, not sending an envoy. Daniel hated Yule, the entire Catholic Church, and if he believed in God, then surely he must hate Him too. Yet, above all of Yule’s parishioners, perhaps the Pope cared for Daniel the most.
He stood in Daniel’s room. He had requested that Jackson Carriage be detained, but that Daniel only be monitored for possible suicide. Yule didn’t understand exactly what had happened to his daughter; one moment she had been in this world, her awful powers amplified by a madman’s creation, and the next, she was gone.
Her hand neither destroying anything nor killing anyone.
She had simply disappeared, and everyone who had seen her …
They went on with their lives.
Except for Daniel—and that’s why the suicide watch was implemented. He would never just ‘go on’ with his life.
Daniel lay in a bed, one that appeared extremely technologically advanced (Everything with them is always over the top, Yule thought, not realizing his thoughts echoed another man walking their halls). Daniel was curled up with a blanket, his back facing the door and him looking at the wall. Yule couldn’t tell if he was awake or not.
“Can we be alone?” Yule whispered to Trinant One.
“Yes,” the woman answered, her voice matching his. Yule understood the unwritten rule between Ministries. One simply did not care for those in another faith. There had been no battles—not a single death from religious wars outside of the Black—but each Ministry looked at all others as beneath them.
Trinant’s voice, though—her whisper so as to not wake Daniel—said maybe she did understand his pain, and maybe she cared about it too.
She turned around and left the room, leaving Yule alone.
A chair sat next to a small table and Yule went to it. Daniel didn’t move in his bed.
Yule pulled a pocket Bible from inside his robe, and opened up to Deuteronomy.
And the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee; fear not, neither be dismayed.
He read on for a while, still unsure whether Daniel was sleeping, but determined not to wake him if so. Yule would be here when he awoke.
Daniel spoke, though, startling Yule.
“Why are you here?”
Yule placed the Bible down on the table, his slight jump settling some. “To bring you home.”
“Home?” Daniel asked. “Where is that exactly? Hasn’t my house been razed?”
“You have the Church at your disposal, Daniel. Whatever you want, you can have.”
“That’s not true, and you know it. I can’t have her.”
“I’m so sorry,” Yule said. His voice was low, emotion running under the surface and threatening to break through.
“What happened to the psychopath?” Daniel said, his own voice sounding untouched. No emotion, only …
Death, Yule thought. He sounds dead.
“Who?” he asked.
“Carriage Jackson. The man that brought me here.”
“He’s being detained. I’m bringing him back as well.”
Daniel said nothing else; Yule had no idea how he felt about Jackson Carriage, the man originally sent to kill his daughter, but then turned into … a partner?
“We’re still looking for her,” Yule said. “As long as I’m alive, we’ll keep searching for Nicki. I promise you that.”
Daniel sat up quickly, his eyes wide. “The machines. I ….” He stumbled over his words, looking down at the floor before him. “I didn’t think about them. The machines. You’re putting me in them when I get back, do you understand?”
He looked up at Yule, and the Pope thought he saw a glimmer of madness in his eyes.
“Okay,” Yule said. “We can do that.”
He didn’t necessarily like agreeing to it, not with the man’s eyes looking so wild, but what was he going to tell him?
Daniel stood up. “Let’s go.”
“Now?”
“Yes, now. Why would we wait?”
“There are a few other things I need to handle while I’m here,” Yule said. “It won’t take long. We should be able to leave tomorrow morning.”
For a brief moment, Yule saw murder in Daniel Sesam. A crazed look that he’d never seen inside him before.
Daniel took hold of it, though, almost visibly wrestling the madness to the ground. He sat back on his bed. “Hurry,” he said, and then lay back down, facing the wall on the opposite side.
Yule sat there, unsure whether to stand or not. He felt … shaken. He’d seen grief before, but had never seen it drive someone—
No, don’t say that. It’s not true.
It is. You know what you saw in his eyes, and just because he’s lying back down doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. His grief is driving him mad. And you’re responsible, Pope Pius XX. Because your Church sent someone to steal his daughter, and then your military operation failed to retrieve her. And now she’s gone, maybe forever, Priest. And he’s still here, all alone.
Yule stood, unable to sit any longer without crying. He left the room. Daniel Sesam made no noise as he did.
Yule had one last meeting before he could leave the One Path; the Constant’s Minister, Benten Connor, had even traveled here for it.
Yule, the First Priest, and Benten sat in Trinant’s office.
Yule was in the middle, Benten to his left, and his right flanked by the First Priest. Yule’s mind could not—would not—refer to the man as the High Priest. He imagined the Priest was angling hard for the position, but in Yule’s head there was only one High Priest, a sick, insane individual. Yule couldn’t imagine anyone ever wanting that title.
Trinant, hosting the meeting, began.
“I
hope this bloody affair is behind us. There is no trace of the girl, absolutely none. The One Path’s military has searched everything, and I mean everything. We’ve scoured the ocean below, the buildings within our territory, and the sky. There is no trace of her.”
She didn’t look at Yule as she spoke, all of the softness she’d showed inside Daniel’s room now gone. She was the One Path’s Minister again, and the rest of the Ministries were only tolerated.
“We’ve also meticulously looked over the recordings,” she continued. “Our researchers … Well, they’re not sure what happened exactly. The best they can tell is, she simply winked out of existence.”
“Winked … out of existence?” Benten asked.
“There was a tremendous surge of energy,” Trinant said. “You all saw it as gray static. Using thermal scans, we can tell it originated from a single point, which when overlaid—”
“There’s no need to overlay anything,” the First Priest said. “I was there. It came from her.”
An icy silence took hold of the room, Trinant staring at the newcomer. A few seconds passed, and then she finally looked away. Yule wanted to laugh, thinking how the First Priest’s start was nearly as poor as the High Priest’s end. He managed to keep his humor inside, but only barely.
“Which when overlaid,” Trinant continued, “with where we think the woman was placed, it appears to have come from her.” She paused for a brief second and looked back at the First Priest. “We can’t tell exactly what happened, but from everything we’ve studied, the energy somehow … There’s only one way to say it, but we think it slowed time. Three hours passed while the energy flowed, but nothing happened for anything touched.”
Yule nodded. His clocks had shown just about three hours during the time the gray static ruled above, but he’d already been told that any time-telling instruments in the sky had simply stopped working. Something like five seconds passed up here.
“The energy then flowed back to its creator, though the focal point seemed to be at the other end of the building’s hallway, and with the First Priest’s input, we know that the woman had stepped out of the High Priest’s box and walked across the floor. So that makes sense.”