The Anathema

by Rawlins, Zachary

  “Anastasia, can I ask you something? Are your… what are those, um, things on your slippers?”

  “They are Domo,” Anastasia said helpfully, pointing at them. “These are Domo slippers.”

  “I see,” Emily blinked. “They’re cute. Where did you get them?”

  “Same place I get everything,” Anastasia said with a shrug. “Tokyo. I have Svetlana take me there every so often so that I can go shopping in Shinjuku. They have all the cutest stuff, and my build,” Anastasia said, grimacing, “is common in Japan. That makes shopping easy.”

  “That’s amazing,” Emily said, raising her voice above the whirring motor of the air popper. “I can’t believe you go all the way around the world to go shopping. That sounds so cool.”

  “Would you like to go?” Anastasia asked, searching cabinets for salt. “We could go sometime during break. Sveta can take us.”

  “Could we?” Emily asked, excited. “Of course I’d love to go! I don’t have any money, but it would be fun to see. I haven’t really been anywhere exciting before this.” Emily waited until the popcorn was finished, and Anastasia returned with a saltshaker, before she went on. “Anastasia, it isn’t that I don’t appreciate it, but I have to ask – why are you being so nice to me?”

  “Am I? I hadn’t noticed. Perhaps it is because you are the first people from outside of my family or cartel to visit this place, and I want you to get a good impression.”

  “Maybe,” Emily said, looking dubious. “Do you want to watch a movie or something?”

  Anastasia nodded and headed toward the room with the giant television in it.

  “Yes, but probably not the same one you want to watch…”

  Negotiations followed. They settled on Heavenly Creatures, because they were both feeling maudlin. Emily cried a little, near the end, but Anastasia remembered it being better.

  * * *

  “I would appreciate it if we could have a frank conversation, Evelyn.”

  The woman rubbed her wrists and looked befuddled by her surroundings. Gaul tried to remember Rebecca’s warnings about the relative humanity and the possible falseness of their emotions, but it was hard. The woman seemed genuinely distressed, and he didn’t like being a party to it. The room they were in was sterile white except for the bare wooden table they sat at and the plastic chairs they occupied. It looked like a disused meeting room, not an interrogation chamber, but Gaul still felt like an inquisitor. Normally, he thought resentfully, he had people for this sort of thing.

  “Whatever you want,” Evelyn said, nodding accommodatingly. “I always cooperate. You don’t have to force me.”

  “I hadn’t planned to,” Gaul said distastefully. “Can you tell me, please, Evelyn, your relative position in the Witch hierarchy?”

  Evelyn ran a hand across a head made bare, and Gaul felt a dull guilt.

  “I can, but you won’t like the answer,” Evelyn said flatly, looking at the table. “I’m nobody special. I don’t know how to make a comparison to your standards, but I’m about as low as our totem pole gets, without being like you people.”

  “Then what would the relative worth of a captured Operator be?”

  “It depends what they are using them for,” Evelyn explained dully. “If they took them prisoner, and they are still alive for you to recover, chances are they wouldn’t trade to get me back because they have some specific use for them. Otherwise, they would have gotten rid of them a long time ago. There’d be no precedent for something like an exchange, anyway. We are expected to hold our own.”

  “Is there someone I could talk to? Someone who might be concerned about your wellbeing? Or might want to see you returned on the basis of security?”

  Evelyn shook her head hesitantly.

  “A superior? A central organization?”

  “You don’t understand,” she said, with something that sounded like pity, as impossible as that was. “You couldn’t possibly understand. We aren’t organized that way. I told you all right from the start, but none of you believed me. We have a… an awareness of each other. There is no word to describe it. Nothing that you have done has restricted, in any way, my connection with them. You may as well be talking to them directly when you speak to me. They do not care what happens to me. Understand this, please – I am very, very afraid. I do not want any more bad things to happen to me. But they do not care.”

  Gaul sat back from the table and pushed his glasses back up.

  “I see. Interesting. So, are some Witches more valuable than others?”

  “Certainly. Older, wiser, more powerful Witches command more respect. Those who control the cattle, the humans. Those successful in the war against your kind. All of them, they are above me,” Evelyn explained, her voice wandering and distant. “But there is no hierarchy as you understand it, no leader for you to speak to. There are those among us who would listen to what you had to say out of curiosity, but they would be no more able to sway our society as a whole than you would.”

  “So, if I understand you correctly,” Gaul said tiredly, “There is no way to negotiate with your kind. Not even to secure your own release.”

  Evelyn looked him in the eyes, her expression desperate but not quite, he thought, defeated.

  “Not even to surrender,” she said flatly. “We have some understanding of your concepts of diplomacy. But we do not agree with the philosophy behind it.”

  “That is… unfortunate,” Gaul said reluctantly. “That would require one side or the other to be completely wiped out for the conflict to end.”

  Evelyn nodded mutely.

  “The intelligence you provided us has proved valid,” Gaul said woodenly, consulting the Etheric Network. “Empathic and telepathic probes, as well as basic self interest, indicate that you are being honest with us, as far as that goes.”

  “Of course,” Evelyn said shakily. “What would I gain with lies? I am dead to my people as it is. Even if I were somehow to escape, they would kill me out of distrust. I have been contaminated by you people.”

  Gaul’s frown tightened.

  “One of my associates has made a rather alarming suggestion. She claims that your emotions are manufactured,” Gaul said, his voice returning to normal as he regarded her critically, observing her through the filter of the empathic protocol that he had downloaded. “She claims that you have fabricated a persona, complete with the kind of emotional responses to stimuli that we would expect, for the sole purpose of feigning humanity, and appealing to our own.”

  Gaul waited and watched while Evelyn fidgeted and twitched, but nothing came of it. He hated downloading empathic protocols; it was all too touchy-feely for him. He always felt dirty afterward, as if he gotten too close and caught something.

  “Well? Is it true?”

  Evelyn spoke slowly when she responded, as if she were under tremendous pressure, as if the words were torn from deep within her, and only at a grievous personal cost.

  “If my persona is manufactured, then I would have no more awareness of it than you would. Do you understand? I would not be able to differentiate between the persona and my own identity. For all intents and purposes, an implanted persona completely replaces the preexisting personality when it is installed.”

  “And this would be true if a human was implanted with a persona?”

  “Certainly,” Evelyn said, with a muted nod.

  “An Operator?”

  “If that is possible, then yes.”

  “Evelyn, when the Auditors took you, were you working for the Anathema? With Anathema? With any Operators at all?”

  “No,” Evelyn said, shaking her head vigorously. “As far as we are concerned there is no difference between you and them. An Operator is an Operator, regardless of your petty disputes. We do not engage in alliances. We have slaves, but we do not have allies.”

  “Then why is it,” Gaul asked, leaning forward, “that we keep finding Witches and Operators working together lately?”

  “I don’t know.”<
br />
  “What about the Terrie Cartel?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Evelyn said, shivering. “Alice Gallow didn’t believe me either. Nevertheless, I genuinely don’t. I can tell you this much, though. It’s a lesson that we teach our young from their first days – anyone can be controlled. All that’s needed is the right leverage.”

  “You think the Anathema have found a way to manipulate Witches?”

  “What do I know?” Evelyn answered, spreading her hands helplessly. “I’m not important. It isn't impossible. As far as I know, there are no Witches working with Operators, so any you have encountered have either gone rogue, or they are under outside control. Do you believe me, Director?”

  Gaul shrugged concomitantly.

  “My fear, my pain, is every bit as a real as yours,” Evelyn said, her hands out imploringly. “I don’t want to be hurt. I don’t want to see Alice Gallow again. I don’t want to die in that cell, and I will ransom my life with whatever I can offer. Is there something that you want from me, Director?”

  Gaul’s pale red eyes narrowed.

  “As a matter of fact,” he said softly, with quiet satisfaction. “There is. We conducted a raid in Shanghai recently, as part of the mop-up of the Terrie Cartel. Instead of finding Witches, we found the Anathema – heretic Operators. So tell me, Evelyn – we aren’t fighting you this time, are we?”

  He could see the surprise in her eyes, and it annoyed him.

  “Of course not,” Evelyn said. “Have you only now realized?”

  * * *

  “Exquisite,” Alice said, running one gloved finger across the blood-smear on the pitted concrete floor. “I’ve never seen another protocol like it. This is what Rebecca and Alistair were so desperate to keep secret. I thought that your ability was permanently restricted. I’m pleased to see that isn’t the case. How long have you been able to use it?”

  Mitsuru sat down heavily on the floor of the basement room. Behind her, the cement wall was spattered with her blood, evidence of the stomach wound the she had sustained, still dripping on to the floor around her in little rivulets. Of the five Anathema she had found in the basement, there were only two intact corpses, leaking from various bullet wounds. The rest were in smaller pieces that were scattered across the room. It looked like a slaughterhouse, and it was starting to smell that way, too.

  “Since last week,” Mitsuru admitted, poking experimentally at the gouge that ran from her side to her belly above her belt line. “I’ve been trying for months, but nothing worked. Then, that night that I brought Alex Warner back…”

  “Aha!” Alice cried, delighted, still inspecting the carnage. “I thought it might be down to that little delinquent. I wondered why they were so damn eager to get me to take over your spot, administering The Program.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Mitsuru said, leaning back against the wall and closing her eyes, “guess I know why, now. I helped him stretch out a cramp the other day, and the bindings around the Black Door, the ones that the Board installed in me, they snapped like rubber bands.”

  “Okay, I see the gunshots, and the knife work,” Alice said approvingly, turning her attention to dissected corpse of a middle-aged man in the center of the room, more a collection of mangled parts than a body, “but what did you do to this unfortunate bastard?”

  “He was the one who wounded me,” Mitsuru said, wrinkling her nose in disgust, “I didn’t even see him, somehow, until he was right on top of me. The thing is, when I activate the protocol, I can do all sorts of things. That,” Mitsuru said, inclining her head at the body without opening her eyes, “is what it looks like, afterwards.”

  “Nasty,” Alice said approvingly.

  Mitsuru gritted her teeth and all around her a deep red tint to the air filled the air, as if Alice was watching through a filtered lens. The blood seeping from the wound in her stomach staunched itself abruptly, coagulating in fast-forward. Mitsuru gasped, opening her eyes and blinking several times to clear her vision.

  “Oh, Mitzi, I like you more and more all the time,” Alice said, hugging her knees to her chest and leering at her. “So why did you call me? Not that I mind, you understand…”

  “I can’t tell Alistair about this,” Mitsuru said meekly, waving her hand to indicate the massacre around her. “He’d freak. And there was another one with them, who got away before I could stop her. She was an Operator. I was hoping we could go after her.”

  “Well, I’d like to, baby, but how?” Alice said, obviously amused. “Bitch has gotta be long gone, if she saw any of what you did here.”

  “Right, but I got some of my blood on her,” Mitsuru said, looking embarrassed. “The nanites inside will keep relaying information back to me for a few hours until they shut down. I can track her, wherever she goes, until that happens.”

  “That’s a nice trick. But what are you doing here in the first place? What are you working?”

  “Alistair gave me the lead,” Mitsuru said hurriedly. “On accident. He doesn’t know I followed up on it, that wasn’t his intention. But I’m angry. About Rebecca. These bastards have something to do with it. That’s what his personal files said, anyway.”

  Alice grinned, stood up, and walked over to where Mitsuru sat. As always, Mitsuru was more than a little intimidated by the tall woman with her jet-black hair and her disturbing smile, but as usual, she seemed utterly benevolent where Mitsuru was concerned. She bent down and patted her head affectionately.

  “Oh, Mitzi, I swear, I could just eat you up!” Alice said, revealing all together too many teeth for Mitsuru’s taste.

  20.

  “Oh, hello,” Alex said, hesitating at the bottom of the crude stairs carved in the cliff face, leading to the cove. “I didn’t realize anybody was down here. I can find somewhere else, if you want…”

  Katya looked at him over the top of her sunglasses. She was in a blue swimsuit with a translucent sarong, sitting on a towel on the narrow strip of white sand that wasn’t flooded by the late afternoon tide. Her hair and suit were both damp. She was shading her eyes with her paperback, and there was a plastic bottle packed with ice and pink liquid in the sand next to her leg.

  “What? No, don’t worry about it,” Katya said, patting the patch of dry sand next to her. “It’s not like it’s my beach, or anything.”

  “Oh. Cool,” Alex said half-heartedly, tossing his towel down as far away from Katya as he could get without sitting in the water, which was barely an arm’s length. “I sort of thought you would be, you know, still following me around.”

  Katya laughed from behind her book.

  “It isn’t like I do that for fun, you know,” she said, rattling the ice in the plastic bottle. “Besides, I don’t really have to keep too close an eye on you here. It is an island, after all. Even with your unique aptitude for getting in trouble, I doubt you could manage too much here.”

  “Oh. Right.”

  Alex sat down beside her and stared at the ocean. He was wearing his board shorts, but he had honestly intended on swimming as much as he intended to get away before Emily realized he was gone.

  “How many movies did they make you watch, anyway?” Katya inquired, folding the top corner of the page she was currently on and setting her book aside. This naturally left Katya’s ample chest on display, which naturally meant that Alex couldn’t dare look at her directly, for fear of his eyes straying. He kept his eyes on the ocean. The ocean seemed safe.

  “I’m not sure,” Alex said, shuddering at the memory. “After a while, I sort of lost count. It was sort of a blur of British accents, period costumes, and women crying endlessly over – actually, I’m not really sure what they were crying over, either. Life, I guess.”

  “Just be glad you fell asleep early last night,” Katya said. “They watched Requiem for a Dream and Dancer in the Dark back-to-back. Emily must have used an entire package of tissues. Even Therese got all weepy.”

  “I would swear that chick from the X-Files was in one of the
m,” Alex said uncertainly. “Why do girls like depressing movies so much?”

  Katya shrugged, uncapped her plastic bottle, and took a long drink from it.

  “Don’t ask me,” she said, wiping her mouth, and holding out the plastic bottle, waggling it in his direction. “I’m not into that stuff.”

  Alex took the wide-mouthed bottle hesitantly. Whatever was in it smelled very fruity, though he couldn’t identify the fruit, with a strong alcoholic undercurrent.

  “What kind of movies do you watch?” Alex asked, cautiously sipping from the wide-mouthed bottle. Katya was watching him while he drank, and burst out laughing when he made a face, forced himself to swallow and handed it, rather insistently, back to her. “And what the hell did I just drink?”

  “Old black-and-white movies and artsy Asian horror flicks, mainly,” Katya said, laughing. “And rice vodka mixed with lychee and tamarind juices. It’s good.”

  “I guess,” Alex said doubtfully. “Old movies? You mean like Psycho, or the Maltese Falcon? Stuff like that?”

  “Sure,” Katya said, shrugging. “Not like it matters. I wasn’t planning to invite you over to watch movies any time soon. Hey,” she said, glancing over at him, either amused or curious, he couldn’t tell behind the sunglasses, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Sure,” Alex said unenthusiastically, watching the ocean slowly recede back from the beach, each wave incrementally less dramatic than the one before it.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Alex broke his own rule, and looked over at Katya. She was crunching her way through an ice cube she had extracted from the bottle, waiting for his response.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “Don’t get all pissy with me. I just don’t understand, that’s all. You came to an island on vacation with a girl who obviously has the hots for you – to the point that it’s more than a little bit embarrassing for those of us watching, by the way – a vacation that, as far as I can tell, you were invited to, rather than forced to go on. And yet I’ve seen Mormon girls who didn’t work as hard at not getting laid, honest to God.”