The Anathema

by Rawlins, Zachary

  “Maybe that sounds scary. Does it, Alex? It’s not really like dying, though. It’s more like… leaving your body behind. Evolving on without it. It just hurts for a minute, and then it’s as if this tremendous burden is lifted from you. And it’s not as if you have much of a life to lose, do you, sleepyhead? After all, your life thus far has mostly been somebody else’s dream.”

  Wait… a dream? No, but, there was something there.

  “It’s funny, knowing this, being able to tell you this. Thanks to the feedback loop – you see how good we are together, right, Alex? How I can tell you the truth, fix the things they’ve done to your head. And you know now, right, how they have tampered with you? Your memories, your history, your emotions, all of it. You don’t actually believe that stuff they told you about who you are, about what you did, where you come from? You have to know that’s not coming from inside you.”

  He was very tired. He would fall asleep soon, he knew, and for some reason, he feared it with a dread that cut right through the euphoria of Emily’s chest pressed against him, her fingertips on his throat. He could not fall asleep yet. He knew it. Because he had something to do.

  “Haven’t you ever wondered why you don’t remember when your birthday is, Alex? Most people do, even unhappy ones. Or, tell me, whom did you live with after the fire? Your grandmother, right? Okay, so tell me, what’s her name?”

  Nothing. Not even an echo. It wasn’t something he forgotten, he was certain. It was something he had never known.

  “Too hard? Then let’s try an easy one. Is she still alive?”

  He knew she didn’t live in the trailer anymore… he thought. But why? Dead? Nursing home? It was too hard to think, like someone had poured mud into his head, and now he was trying to think through the sludge.

  “I read your file, Alex. I’m sorry, but I thought it might help me understand you a little better. But it doesn’t make any sense, not at all. Alex, do you remember your father hurting you?”

  He did. He wanted to say he did. But all he really remembered were stories about it. Stories that he remembered having been told.

  “Do you remember if you had a brother or a sister, Alex? Just one? Because the police report said there were four bodies in that house that burned down, that they found you sitting outside of, reeking of gasoline with the matches still in your pocket, just staring at it as the roof caved in. Do you remember your mother’s name? What color was her hair, Alex? Where did you go to elementary school? When did you learn to ride a bike? What’s the name of the first girl you had a crush on? What’s your favorite movie, Alex?”

  He felt like he had answers. He felt indignant, in the wake of every question, just for a minute. Then it all fell away from him, as he sunk back into the bliss that ebbed and swelled through him, every time Emily ran her wet hands across his skin. Alex knew that he didn’t have the answers, not for any of the questions she had asked him. And that did bother him. But that wasn’t what he had forgotten.

  “Do you see, Alex? Do you really remember anything, before they locked you up? Who you were, what you did, what you were like? Do you remember doing any of the things they told that you did, Alex, or did you believe them because you couldn’t remember anything? Do you know who did all of this to you, who made your life this way?”

  She was right, he had forgotten things. A number of things. But one of them was much more immediately important than the others. Something…

  On the other hand, maybe, was there someone else? Someone besides the girl whose blond hair was dripping warm water on his chest?

  “I didn’t understand it myself until I looked back and saw my body, the old one, floating in the pool, discarded. I wasn’t horrified, Alex, I was exhilarated. Now all I need is the proper volume of water and the nanites do the rest. Moreover, I am not the only one, Alex, and becoming a Drown isn’t the only way forward. But it’s evolution, Alex. When we get back to the Outer Dark, Alex, John Parson will fix whatever it is they’ve done to you, help you get rid of all the lies your head is filled with. Aren’t you tired of being lied to? Do you really want to become a weapon for the people who did this to you? The Anathema didn’t come here to hurt you, Alex, or anyone else. We just want to help you. I don’t want you to always be empty, they way they left you.”

  Her words flowed out of his mind, like trying to catch water in his hands. Like trying to hold Emily as she had leaked out of his arms, cold water all over the floor.

  The room was empty, besides them. As it always had been. And his hands were just as empty.

  Except…

  Except maybe it they weren’t. His left hand had been doing things, while he wasn’t paying attention. There was something clutched in his palm, something coarse and textured, something he had forgotten. Something a girl had given him. Another girl. There was another girl?

  There was. And for some reason, all he could think was that he needed to hold on to it. As tightly as possible.

  His hand squeezed around whatever was inside it. He felt nothing, at first, and then he felt a prick, a needle sliding smoothly into the skin of his hand, and then a temporary blossom of pain. Then there was warmth, spreading from the point of the injury, running through his veins like a beautiful poison.

  There was a girl, he could remember that now. A girl with blue hair… no. A girl who dyed her hair blue, to hide the way it really looked. He could see her now, twirling and spinning, alone on a crowded dance floor, the light around her as slow and thick as honey. And her hair. Beneath the blue dye, he could see it, so clearly that he wondered how he hadn’t noticed before. It wasn’t blond.

  Her hair was made of light.

  He did not remember her name, not at first. He remembered, instead, a group of monarch butterflies above California coastal sage and scrubland, orange wings against the brilliant blue sky; the smell of sandalwood and salt water; distantly, the sound of the waves breaking on a rocky beach.

  Just like that, he remembered Eerie, lost in more ways the one. He remembered Rebecca, lying unresponsive, just a meter or two from where he lay. He remembered Katya, probably unconscious in a slowly rising pool of freezing water.

  “Alex?” Emily asked him, sitting up slowly, her expression worried. “What has gotten into you all of a sudden? I told you not to worry…”

  That was it, he figured. Over before it started. He’d already triggered her suspicions, with a slight emotional shift. Emily would notice the little cushion that Eerie had knitted him, and use telepathy and empathically induced bliss to make his mind a clean slate again. She would be able to do it just by thinking about it, long before he would have a chance to try to stand up and reach for Rebecca, to try out Gaul’s plan for waking her up. That was, if he was even able to activate the catalyst effect. He had never really understood it, after all. It was just something that happened when he touched people, sometimes…

  Then he had a thought. It was a surprising thought, and it made him smile for some reason. Emily look briefly confused, but she misread it, and smiled back down on him, buying him a second or two more before she knocked him for a loop again.

  He closed his eyes, and he thought hard about Rebecca; her dry laugh, her omnipresent cigarettes, her thoughtful, warm brown eyes. He thought about the first time he had met her, at his activation. He thought about the way it felt, when she worked on him, the tides of energy and emotion. He thought about touching Rebecca, Rebecca touching him. Some of his thoughts were more socially acceptable than others, but he had no idea what would work.

  The connection between their minds flickered to life like a spark. He felt as if he were drawing Rebecca up from the bottom of a very deep well, out of the darkness and the echoes. The effort took his breath away.

  Rebecca sat up bolt upright, like the girl from The Exorcist. Emily let out a little shriek in response.

  “Fucking finally,” Rebecca gasped, tugging the IV needle from her arm. “Now, anyone who doesn’t want to start reliving their childhood traumas bette
r start telling me where Alistair is, and what the fuck is going on.”

  * * *

  “You brought a telepath, and the pretty girl does barriers, and Chris hides behind them like a bitch. What kind of tricks do you do?” Alice asked, approaching Song slowly, a revolver in her right hand, still pointed at the ground. Xia followed behind her, while Curtis, Michelle and Chris all huddled behind the barrier. “Out of curiosity.”

  “All sorts of things,” Song answered calmly. “But in this case? In this case, I think I will take control of the nanites inside your friend with the mask, and then he and Michelle can focus all their effort on killing you.”

  Alice tossed her hair and laughed, but the laughter trailed off, and she got a funny look on her face.

  “Hey, Xia,” Alice said quietly, glancing over her shoulder. “What are you apologizing for?”

  The Kevlar Alice wore was flame-retardant. That didn’t stop Xia from lighting it up like the a dry hillside in September, but it did give her time to leap through a nearby shadow. She made a series of three quick jumps, until she was sure she was far enough away to be out of his range, than she hit the ground rolling, and shed her overcoat on the way back up, leaving it in a smoldering pile behind her. She barely had her feet underneath her when she noticed a slight distortion in the center of her field of vision, a ripple in the stone flooring that she recognized just in time to fall backwards, through her own shadow, porting ten meters to the right. She stepped out from the shadow of one of the supporting buttresses of the massive ceiling, in time to watch a whole section of the wall cave in with a sound so thunderous she felt it more than she heard it, directly behind where she had just been. Michelle was still pulsating with light the color of a pale yellow wine; Alice adjusted her expectations of the woman’s telekinetic power accordingly.

  The room was large, but there was no question of hiding. Both Xia and Michelle had turned to face her, waiting patiently for her to close into range again, so that they could burn and bludgeon her. Song slumped over on the ground behind them. Behind her, in the soap-bubble barrier, Christopher Feld cowered. In the distance, she could see the dust and hear the grunts and curses of Leigh and Mitsuru’s fight. Alice looked uncertainly at the pistol in her hand.

  She glanced over at Gaul, distant at the far end of the room, standing over the Source Well as if he was worried it would run away.

  Boss? You have any more cards up your sleeve? Because this would be a great time to find out that we secretly have the advantage…

  She glanced over at Gaul hopefully, but he just stared back, demanding and pitiless.

  “Fine, have it your way,” Alice said sullenly, walking at Michelle and Xia as if she had nothing to be afraid of. “But this is a pretty sorry set-up for a man who can predict the future.”

  28.

  Emily planted her hand firmly on his chest, as if she planned to claim it in the name of God and country. She glared at Rebecca, and Rebecca, still dressed in a hospital smock and still clambering out of a hospital bed, glared right back.

  “You better back off, Rebecca,” Emily warned. “I’m not as you remember me, and I’ve got Alex elevating my power. You don’t stand a chance.”

  “Yeah, not while you are like that,” Rebecca admitted. “For all your vaunted power, though, you still lack technique. Any skilled telepath would have noticed me waking Katya up, and having a little chat with her. Sorry about this, Alex.”

  He was about to ask what she was sorry for, when it seemed as if he was stabbed, in the right thigh, the left shoulder, and between his thumb and forefinger on his right hand. When he looked at his hand, he saw most of an acupuncture needle protruding from the wound, and then he suddenly found his voice again, and yelled inarticulately.

  The catalyst effect ended so abruptly that it was like being in a room filled with loud music only a moment before, and now is blanketed with an awkward, questioning silence. Emily’s presence in his mind receded like the tide, and its place, he found anger and a sense of betrayal, left behind like shells on the sand in the wake of a storm.

  “Now that we are back to our normal footing,” Rebecca said, standing up on unsteady legs, “why don’t you tell me where Alistair is, before I decide to tear it out of your poor little brain, Emily?”

  Emily smiled, kissed Alex full on the mouth, and then, before he had a chance to react, melted into water. He found himself again staring helplessly at his dripping wet chest and arms as Emily disappeared, still in too much pain to contemplate removing the needles that pierced him. Rebecca looked slowly around the room, at the water she was ankle deep in.

  “She’s gone. Fucking hell,” Rebecca said blankly. “When did she start doing that?”

  “Things got really complicated while you were away,” Katya muttered, splashing into the room. She saw Alex gingerly touching the needle in his arm and smacked his hand away. “I’ve composed the best narrative I can with a concussion. Just read it off my brain.”

  Katya seized his arm firmly, pinning it to the trundle bed, and then smiled apologetically.

  “Next time I see that bitch, I swear I will have figured out how to kill her. Now, hold still,” she said sweetly, “I’d hate to accidentally hurt you.”

  Alex didn’t cry out while she removed the needles. He made faces, writhed, and swore loudly, but he didn’t cry out. He felt good about that.

  “Hey, Katya,” Rebecca said, examining her stringy, greasy hair ruefully, “nice story. Now, if you give me a cigarette, I promise to forget to mention all that parts of the story that would get you suspended from the Academy, alright?”

  “Sure,” Katya said hurriedly, tossing a pack of cigarettes to Rebecca, a book of matches tucked in the cellophane.

  “Wait,” Alex said slowly, poking at his elbow, where the needle had been, “what did you do?”

  “You won’t tell him, right?” Katya pleaded. “I brought you cigarettes.”

  “Promise,” Rebecca said, lighting up and then, finally, smiling and looking a little bit like the woman he knew; if still skinny and wrapped in a wet hospital gown. “We are going to have a chat, later, though.”

  Katya whitened, but she nodded. Alex looked at her questioningly, but Katya stolidly ignored him, and he was afraid to ask Rebecca at that particular moment.

  “Okay, kids, here is the plan,” she begin enthusiastically, taking two steps in an attempt to pace and then stopping because of the splashing. “Katya, I need you to go find me some clothes – the stuff I was wearing should be down with the admission’s nurse station at the end of the hall. Alex, come on over. You and me, we are going to achieve an understanding, and then we are going to do some crazy shit that will save everybody. Those who aren't dead already. Mostly. Are we clear?”

  “No way,” Alex said firmly, rolling off the soaking trundle bed and onto the flooded floor. “First off, the deal was that I would get here and get you up again, that’s it. Now, I am going to go find Eerie. Secondly, while I am really, really happy to see you up and around again, I and everybody else here is pretty pissed off at you right now. Fair warning.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Rebecca said sheepishly. “Which is why saving everybody is a key part of my overall plan. You see, Alistair didn’t put me to sleep, he trapped me in my body and somehow cut off access to my protocol. I stopped telepathically screaming for help after a couple of days, and all I’ve been doing since then is thinking. I have a plan to make up for it, to you and everybody else. But I need your help.”

  “Well, I’m not pissed at you, if that helps,” Katya offered, splashing her way out the door and into the hall.

  “Sorry, Rebecca, but I am done being ordered around today,” Alex said, pausing to try to wring some of the water out of his t-shirt. “I’m going to find Eerie.”

  “If you help me, I will find her for you,” Rebecca offered, “and I won’t tell her about what happened with Emily, over break.”

  “Are you and Anastasia in some kind of extortion club that I don
’t know about?” Alex complained. “That’s low, Rebecca.”

  “I don’t have time to be nice,” Rebecca snapped. “Now. Yes or no?”

  “Okay,” Alex said, sighing. “Alright. What do we do?”

  * * *

  Leigh was still faster than she was, but now that Mitsuru understood how the Ecofage Protocol worked, that wasn’t really a problem anymore. It didn’t really matter if Leigh managed to dodge all of Mitsuru’s attacks, because all Mitsuru had to do was bleed on her. Leigh had to be cautious about touching her, as much of Mitsuru glistened with the slick, caustic black blood that flowed like motor oil over her skin, thick and warm. Leigh had ducked and bobbed and weaved her way around Mitsuru’s strikes, but her arms, chest and neck were already splattered with sizzling black sores, and they were expanding.

  Mitsuru threw a lazy kick at her head, and Leigh dodged it easily, moving inside automatically, just as Mitsuru thought she would. Leigh knew she couldn’t do much, up close, but it is hard to think clearly in combat, and like most fighters, she depended on a routine she had practiced until it was instinctual. She wouldn’t change her fighting style, not while she was under pressure. Mitsuru didn’t bother to dodge the punch that Leigh aimed at her head, because she was too busy tossing a handful of blood she had collected in her palm at the center of the vampire’s chest. Leigh’s punch hit with the force of jackhammer, and Mitsuru thought that she had probably broken her jaw.

  It was worth it.

  Leigh went stumbling back, brushing at the steaming liquid splashed across her chest in a panic, which was the worst thing she could have done. Wherever it touched her hands and arms, it clung, and then it started to eat away at the vampire, converting everything into more of itself, more of the crawling black nanite dissemblers. Even her long blond hair had small flecks of the black blood in it. The vampire may not have felt pain as her synthetic body dissolved, but Mitsuru saw the fear and impotent rage in her eyes clearly, and she took a guilty satisfaction in it.