by David Beers
“How much longer?” Tidus asked. He had asked it before, but forgotten the answer.
The man in front of him only giggled.
Tidus thought he had been in the Globe for a day. Maybe two, but that might be pushing it. The past grew hazy for Tidus, and he knew it hadn’t always been that way. His memory used to work, before they’d tossed him into the pit. Now, though, it was broken—like a lot of other things inside him.
He remembered ships arriving at the pit, remembered them lowering to where he and others clung to the edge. He didn’t know what brought the ships, but it might have been the fact they were fucking swimming around the pits when they weren’t supposed to be moving.
And when he thought about it, that was hilarious.
He giggled.
Without looking back, the man in front of him giggled too.
It didn’t matter; Tidus wouldn’t be able to remember everything that happened before he got here, no matter how hard he tried. If it wasn’t for the Prophet, Tidus would have been lost—but the Prophet had given him purpose. He was to take this Globe, and kill everyone inside it.
The first hour had been a free-for-all. They docked and people died by the thousands. No security forces had been able to get down far enough to stop them, so they finally blocked everything off. No swings worked on any of the floors Tidus now owned, and the doors moving upward had hardened so that no one could step through them. Tidus wasn’t certain, but he thought the doors and the pits were made of a similar substance.
Though he doubted the doors drove people insane.
He giggled.
No, the people that lived here were perfectly fine, no broken synapses to be found in any of them!
All of that might be true, but they didn’t have the Prophet on their side, and that’s why they would lose. Sane but not safe.
Tidus—at this point in his life—would much rather be insane and safe.
He didn’t know the name of the man in front of him, only that he had the Blood of the Touched, just like Tidus. Everyone that had come with him possessed the Blood, and all of them were … wait for it …
As crazy as Tidus!
Focus, focus, focus, he thought. Gotsta focus on what’s in front of you.
The man in front of Tidus looked like some kind of cross between a human and an octopus, if the octopus had been made of gray static.
Tidus almost giggled again at that, but forced it back down.
The man sat in front of a large panel, ones and zeros running across at a rapid pace. His hands were on the glass panel, palms pressed down, though they were doing nothing. The work was being done by the static strands (Tentacles! Tidus’s mind tried to shout, nearly causing another giggle fit). They fanned out around his palms, lying lightly on the glass, somehow figuring out the codes that would force the doors to soften again.
This was happening all across their current floor. Hundreds of people pressed against panels.
Tidus didn’t have a clue how it worked, not any more than he did how the strands on his own hands had pulled him from the pit. If he wanted, he could walk up to that same panel and use his own tentacles (the word was just too damned funny), and they’d start cracking the code, too.
The Prophet.
That’s how this was happening.
The Unformed.
That’s all Tidus needed to know, and all he cared about anymore.
That’s not true, he thought. You care about killing the people above you.
He simply couldn’t help it then; he giggled.
Because that was the truth, and the One Path be praised, the whole truth. He wanted to kill everyone in this Globe, and it wasn’t like before. This wasn’t a righteous war anymore. It wasn’t even about his father’s death, because they’d both taken up the black flag and gone to war. This was vengeance … because of what they’d done to him. Because they’d broken him, and at least some part of Tidus understood he would never be the same again.
It didn’t matter. They were making progress, and that progress was speeding up, too. It took them six hours to break out of their first detainment on the third floor (though to be honest, the numbers were all really hazy for Tidus). Since then, they’d managed to go up 300 floors. Three hundred. They were halfway to the top, and though Tidus didn’t know exactly where the four Ministers were, he knew they’d eventually be found.
No one was leaving this place.
The Prophet had made sure of that, and the Unformed blessed him for such.
A shudder went through the door to the left of the panel, and Tidus grinned. The door was open, and most likely, 50 more floors were open with it. They just needed to hurry before a new code was inserted into the programming.
A beam shot through the door.
Tidus looked to his left. One of his brothers stood looking down at his stomach, a large patch of blood spreading quickly over his clothing. The gray strands hanging from his hands faded out of existence.
He’s dead, Tidus thought, stifling another giggle.
There were armed forces on the other side of the doors now, but that was fine. Tidus was looking forward to it.
Yule opened his eyes and looked across the large room. General Spyden had just entered.
Yule had been praying, though unsure exactly what he was asking of God. He didn’t understand this world any longer, not what he saw on the large glass windows next to him, nor the information coming to them from outside.
The Black had returned.
The Globe of One was under attack, and after all the Ministers had commanded their armies be sent here, their own Ministries had exploded. The Black’s adherents rose up yet again, no longer running, but fighting with the same ruthlessness they’d shown weeks before.
That was what Yule’s prayer had consisted of, mainly.
God, has the Black returned?
Has it really?
Unable to believe it, and from Spyden’s current countenance, perhaps their own deaths were growing nearer as well.
“Another 200 floors have fallen, Your Grace,” she said, not glancing to the other three people in the room. “They’re breaching them quicker now, with each floor they manage to break through, they crack code for nearly 100 more.”
Yule looked to Trinant. The woman was staring at the massive windows, watching their silent movies. The images on them changed from time to time, the cameras moving to where action could be seen. It was always the same, though, and Yule had quit watching. The people with static clinging to their hands killing everyone they saw, and savagely. Sometimes kicking in their skulls instead of using the weapon in their hand.
Once in a while, a One Path faithful would kill one of theirs, and the First Priest always shouted when he saw it, as if his team had scored a point—momentarily forgetting the overall score.
The First Priest never stopped watching the windows.
“How far away are the reinforcements?” Trinant asked.
“The Old World should be here in 12 hours. The True Faith and Constant Ministries are 18 hours out yet,” the General said.
Yule and Benten had given the general permission to marshal their forces. Yule had let his own generals know that she was in charge, and to follow her orders. There wasn’t time for bickering, though the First Priest somehow found some. It’d taken him 10 minutes to agree to hand the reigns over.
Yule honestly wasn’t sure this man was an improvement from the High Priest. Just a different sort of crazy. It seemed to breed from the True Faith. Perhaps it was all those years underground.
That’s not fair, his mind chastised. You know two of them; judge not, that you not be judged.
“How long before the attackers reach us? The Black’s followers?” Trinant asked.
“At their current pace, they’ll be here within the next 10 hours, but we’re attempting something new,” the general answered. “We’re drastically changing the codes used to seal off the floors.”
Trinant looked from the window to Spyd
en. “What do you mean?”
“Our security is based off a binary system right now. We’re going to insert a dual-binary system.”
“What will that do?” Yule asked, only knowing that it sounded like they were doubling something.
“It should make their code cracks about four times as difficult to achieve.”
“So that’ll give us two days?” Trinant asked.
“In a perfect world. Our modeling shows that they adapt quickly to the code, though. If that adaptation holds constant, we’re looking at 20 hours.”
“The reinforcements will be here, but we still need a plan to get them inside,” Trinant said. “How is our own military holding up inside?”
“We’ve lost approximately half of our soldiers.”
Trinant nodded. “Civilians?”
“Impossible to say accurately, Your Grace,” the general said. “A large proportion on every floor. Some are in hiding, but not many.”
“How prepared are we if they make it here?” the First Priest interrupted.
The general didn’t look to him until Trinant did. Yule glanced at Benten, and the Minister’s face appeared as disgusted as the other two.
“We’ll be as prepared as every other floor,” the general said before turning back to her Minister.
“Thank you,” Trinant said. “Update us at your convenience or whenever necessary.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Spyden said and then exited the room.
Yule stood up and walked across the office, staring at the windows.
“They’re wild,” he said. “Like animals. Look at that one. She’s laughing.”
Blood was splattered across her right cheek, dark red against pale skin. She appeared to be dragging a dead body, just pulling it by its leg, the static strands on her arm wrapped around the ankle. Laughing the entire way.
“The Black has never done this before,” Yule said.
“It’s not the Black,” Trinant said. “It’s us. The One Path.”
The Pope turned around. “What do you mean?”
“Have you heard of our detention centers?”
The First Priest looked over as well. “Is that where the High Priest is?”
Trinant kept looking at Yule. “Yes. The civilian population calls them the pits. We house specific criminals in the detention center here, but for the majority of the population, they’re placed in massive containers. Each ‘center’ contains a liquid, though I think the technical terminology is pentium carcerem. We can do different things with this liquid, depending on the criminals housed inside.”
She broke away from Yule’s stare, turning her face to the windows. Trinant was quiet for a moment. She was pale, a Minister frightened when she was supposed to be the most protected person in the entire territory.
“We use a dosage which ensures they lose their minds,” she finally said.
“Why?”
“Revenge. For the amount of people they killed. For all of those faithful they butchered. They threw them from buildings, Yule. Their bodies were obliterated when they hit the ocean below. Justice would have been to make them remain in the pits forever, slowly going insane. Not even knowing their own names.”
Trinant didn’t look at him as she spoke, but watched the product of her actions.
Yule turned and watched it too.
We, the most religious, created this, he thought. God, have mercy on us. Please, have mercy on all of us.
Yule went to Daniel, though Spyden advised him not to. It would be harder to protect him if the attackers somehow broke through. She offered an escort as well, but Yule denied it. He felt sick to his stomach, and sitting in that room with those other three was only worsening it.
The people marching toward them, gray strands dripping from their hands and their minds broken … The Black hadn’t done that. The One Path had.
Yule needed some time away from it all--to simply gather his thoughts, if nothing else.
Daniel was on the same floor, though it took him 10 minutes to get there. Guards were posted all over the place—Yule noticing that as their rank decreased, more men were visible.
Daniel was sitting in the room’s only chair, Yule’s small Bible open in front of him.
“How bad is it?” he asked, looking up as Yule entered.
Yule had been in contact with him over the past day, updating him as he could. The man had calmed some, though the Pope didn’t think Daniel would ever be exactly friendly.
Nor should he, given what the Church has done to him.
“It’s worse,” he said, sitting down on the bed. “They’re 200 floors beneath us now.”
“Any good news?”
“Well, all religion might be wiped out within the next day or two, and you might consider that good.” Yule smiled as he said it, though nothing similar crossed Daniel’s face.
“Is that what you see yourself as? How you see the four Ministers? You embody religion?”
Yule, forgetting his title and propriety, laid back on Daniel’s bed and looked up at the ceiling. “No, Daniel. I was only kidding. Religion didn’t start with any of us, nor will it end if we perish. Religion will continue because God wants it to be so.”
The two were quiet for a few minutes, the Pope preferring this man’s company to the Ministers’.
“It’s the Black?” Daniel asked.
“Yes.”
“How did It come back? Its weapon is dead.”
“We don’t know,” Yule said. “We don’t know a lot about this. But it’s happening everywhere. They waited until our forces were en route here, and then attacked.”
“Do you think It’ll win?”
Yule recognized that was the first question Daniel had asked him in which he actually cared about the Pope’s thoughts. Yule remained where he was, not wanting to disrupt whatever had made him ask it. The Pope didn’t hear any fear in his voice—in fact, Daniel seemed more okay with what was happening here than he had anything else since Yule knew him.
Because his daughter’s not involved.
“I don’t know.” He paused for a second, thinking he should say something else, but then only repeating it. “I really don’t know.”
He heard Daniel flip the page in the Bible.
“What are you reading?”
Daniel chuckled. “Genesis.”
“Why?”
“Just the ridiculousness of it all. God breathing life into dirt and then creating more life out of a rib. Name these animals. Don’t eat that fruit. It just sounds crazy when you look at it objectively; I’ve always thought so, but have never really been able to say it before. Now it doesn’t matter.”
“Not finding any solace?” the Pope asked.
“No. Only distraction.”
Yule sat up. “Your attitude has changed over the past day. Why? I understand Nicki isn’t in danger with any of this, but why the … calm? You and I may very well die within the next few hours. I don’t begrudge you your attitude; I’m only curious.”
Daniel didn’t look up from the Bible. “If she’s really lost, then I’m okay with dying. I’ve been full of anger since this all started, but if there’s no way to find her, then I’m not going to waste my last few hours hating the Church. Hating you. It would mean you all win.”
In front of him, Yule saw the Old World’s version of those battling up from the bottom of this globe. Perhaps Daniel wasn’t insane, full of hate instead. Even now, calm as he was, it was the hate that made him so. Yule didn’t understand how religion could inspire such love, yet also such hate … such violence.
Yes you do, you fool.
“Religion has created a lot of good in this world,” he said, not truly knowing if he was talking to himself or Daniel. He only paused for a moment, knowing that Daniel would interrupt to argue if given the opportunity. “But it’s also done some of the most evil things imaginable. In that book you’re reading, examples of both proliferate throughout. In the end, Daniel, it’s not religion that is good or bad, b
ut people. We can do what we want with what God has given us. We can use it to help and grow selfless, to put others before ourselves. Or, we can take the words in that book and use them to conquer. To kill. I won’t even say twist the words, because we don’t have to twist very hard to make it so.”
He did pause then, looking at his black shoes.
“God is real, Daniel. Nothing you can ever say will convince me otherwise. He exists and He loves us. But I believe He recognizes our imperfections. And because He is God, He has to turn away from the evil in man. People will say that God is cruel, but that’s not true. Man is cruel. It wasn’t God that did anything to your daughter, but it was the Church. I’ll grant you that, because the Church is nothing but man using God’s words as he desires. If you want to hate man, go ahead, Daniel. I can’t stop you, nor would I even try. Man has earned his hate. I would caution you on hating God, though. To hate God is to hate choice in itself, and to hate the part of that choice that allows you to love Nicki so.”
The Pope stood and went to the door. He stopped at it.
“I guess, maybe I would even caution you about hating man, too, though. Recognize us for what we are, but if God can love us, then surely there is good here, too. Because God loves your daughter, whether or not you want to believe it. You hate the bad, and you love the good, but in this world, the two often walk hand in hand.”
Eight
Raylyn sat silently in the back of the transport.
She didn’t know where she was going, nor what she was doing.
And maybe, just maybe, she had sold her soul. Not to some Prophet or false god, but sold it all the same. Because she was alone in the back of the transport, the man she loved left behind on some island. And who was the person with her in this transport, sitting up front? The weapon’s sister.
Raylyn would have laughed if she hadn’t been so close to crying, because life no longer made sense. Everything she had believed in a month ago was gone, and everything she had possessed, trashed. And now, the only person she had loved was going to die.