Gather the Sentient

by Amalie Jahn

  Through this strategic investing, he amassed a financial empire in less than two years, but by the time he began swallowing up major corporations, including his father’s, into his massive corporate conglomerate, even that wasn’t enough power to satisfy him completely. He wanted more from life. He needed more. He longed for a life without limits, and that is when he fully realized what it meant to be part of the prophecy: he could control the fate of the world and thereby his own fate. According to the prophecy, a life without limits is what the dark prophets would usher in for the seven dark psychics.

  Evagrius Ponticus, an early desert father from 300AD, was the first to identify and spread the idea that there were seven evils one needed to avoid – lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. It was thought these evils lead ultimately to the moral decline of a man. This suggestion was laughable to Patrick in so much that he believed life was at its finest when each of the seven was embraced instead of scorned. For what other purpose was there but to indulge in all of life’s pleasures?

  What the religious called ‘sin’ and atheists called ‘the moral truth,’ Patrick called repression. As far as he was concerned, both dogmas were established by man for the sole purpose of avoiding chaos. But what if chaos was what made the drudgery of life worth living? It was accepted in modern society that murder was objectionable. But why? To oppose death one must inherently value life, which he did not. Therefore, if there were people whose lives he did not value, what should stop him from killing them?

  That he was forced to live in a society in which he did not fundamentally belong infuriated him. Being required to obey laws he did not subscribe to was beneath him. Therefore, on his 25th birthday, he committed to redoubling his efforts in an attempt to locate the remaining dark psychics.

  The result of those efforts was on her way now, and he knew it would be difficult to adequately describe to her how meaningful it was to be one of the seven dark psychics, just as he had done with each of the others at their first meetings.

  He was still mulling it over when the town car arrived.

  “She’s here,” he announced, clutching his hands together at his chest.

  Less than five minutes later his personal assistant slipped her head through the doorway to announce Akantha’s arrival. “Send her in,” he commanded.

  He wasn’t prepared for the woman who now stood before him. No longer in her immodest grass skirt and tribal face paint, she was outfitted in modern attire – a pair of jeans and a red cotton t-shirt with the Manchester United crest on her chest. Although the bone had been removed, a gaping hole in her nose’s columella remained, as did her wooden earlobe adornments. She was close to six and a half feet of pure sinew, which was clearly visible, outlined beneath the clinging cotton of her shirt. She towered over both he and Javier, rousing the slightest pang of inferiority in his carefully-crafted persona. He wasn’t used to being at a disadvantage, physically or otherwise. He suddenly hoped Eshanti’s portraits of their peaceful introduction were accurate.

  Instead of crossing the room to greet her, he offered her a seat by the window, gesturing with his hands and slipping into the leather wingback furthest from the door. Sitting together, eye to eye, felt like the safest way to greet this woman who was clearly capable of becoming a formidable adversary given the right circumstances. The interpreter, a squat, bookish-looking Brit with a receding hairline and expanding waistline encouraged her, in what Patrick assumed was her native tongue, to take the seat across from him. When she obliged without so much as a moment’s hesitation, he smiled to himself at finding such a suitable translator for the job.

  “Hastings, is it?” he asked the interpreter, who took the fourth chair across from Javier in the semi-circle beside the window.

  “Yes, sir,” he replied.

  Knowing Hastings would soon be privy to many of the prophecy’s secrets, it was necessary to become better acquainted with him. “I trust your flight was uneventful?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Akantha was well-behaved?”

  “She was visibly shaken during take-off, but rightfully so, and no worse off than most nervous first-time travelers.”

  She spoke then, a series of broken gibberish.

  “She wants to know what we’re discussing. She doesn’t like being… excluded.”

  Patrick smiled warmly at Akantha, the same endearing smile he used to encourage would-be investors into his Ponzi schemes and women into his bed. From beneath his chair he produced a scroll. He unrolled it to reveal Eshanti’s paintings of the Amazonian. Akantha leaned forward in her seat, reaching out as if to touch the canvas. She spoke.

  “She’s asking if these pictures are of her.”

  “Indeed they are. Tell her they were painted by another god of the prophecy who has the ability to foretell the future through her drawings. Explain they helped us to find her and convinced us she’s one of the seven.”

  Akantha considered this and spoke again.

  “She wants to know what it means to be one of the seven.”

  Patrick’s heart leapt. The moment he’d been waiting for.

  “To be part of the seven is an extraordinary thing,” he began. “Based on my own interpretations of the ancient scrolls which reference the prophecy, I believe that once the seven of us are finally in one place, together we will rule the world. We will have authority not only over the remaining light remnant but also all of the people who, although dark, are inferior. We will be at the helm of a purely hedonistic society and we will make slaves of those who would challenge us.”

  He waited for Hastings to interpret his explanation, taking pleasure in the fear he saw in the man’s eyes. When he finished, Patrick asked Akantha, “So tell me now, do you enjoy creating fire?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “You enjoy using it to punish people you don’t like?”

  “Yes,” she said again.

  “It brings you pleasure to burn things.”

  She nodded.

  “But the people of your tribe have always prevented you from burning as you wish?”

  “Yes.”

  “I don’t blame you for hurting your family when they prevented you from doing what you wanted. As a matter of fact, I admire that sort of initiative. Just between you and me, I had my own father killed years ago when he tried to prevent me from taking over his business. It didn’t have to end as it did. He could have just let me do as I wished. But he refused to yield.” Patrick shrugged. “And so I was forced to eliminate him. Such a pity.”

  He slid forward in his chair and their faces were so close he could smell the earthy huskiness of her skin. “What if I told you being one of the seven will ensure there will come a time when you will be allowed to do as you wish with your power without fear of punishment or repercussions.”

  He could sense Hastings, the interpreter, fumbling over the translation. There was terror in his voice.

  Patrick smiled.

  And Akantha smiled in return.

  Then she set Hastings on fire.

  CHAPTER

  12

  JOSE

  Tuesday, September 6

  Phoenix

  Andrea’s eye remained swollen, but the surrounding skin was no longer black. In the days since Jose had last seen her, the bruise had faded into a vivid shade of green, like the sky just before a rare desert storm. He stood above her now, watching the rise and fall of her chest, considering the loveliness of her features and the stubbornness of her spirit.

  While cleaning the floor in exam room three, he’d heard the EMT’s call come in from the ambulance about the 22-year-old female with a crushed pelvis, collapsed lung, and internal bleeding. He’d watched a team of doctors and nurses race her lifeless body through the emergency room straight to the OR, where after eight hours of grueling surgery, they’d managed to stabilize her.

  Now, as Andrea lay sleeping in the hospital bed, he wondered how she would explain away her life-threatening injuries
when she finally came to. Would she admit her boyfriend had been the one behind the wheel of the car which careened into her at over 30 mph? Would she try to convince herself that she deserved to be run over by a moving vehicle? Or would she finally recognize that pain is not a part of love, no matter how you try to force the misshapen piece into the heart-shaped puzzle?

  She stirred fitfully, and his stomach dropped as he glanced at the bank of machinery monitoring her vital signs. If any of the machines alarmed, the nurses’ station would be alerted and there was a good chance he wouldn’t be able to make it out of the room unnoticed before someone arrived. He couldn’t allow himself to be caught loitering in a patient’s room, especially outside of the ER, but when the beeps and clicks remained steady, his breathing calmed and he convinced himself to stay.

  In all his years of healing, he had never felt a stronger need to cure. He let his fingers brush against her bare arm, swollen with IV lines and crisscrossed in surgical tape. He considered doing it here, now, without her knowledge or consent as he had always done with others, but as he contemplated the true source of pain in her life, he reconsidered. Although her damaged body was in dire need of his intercession, she needed more from him. She needed a way out of her current life.

  When his Aunt Carla made the decision to leave her husband, she’d locked herself away for several months at his parents’ house. Jose remembered Uncle Elias pounding on their front door late at night, crying out for Carla like a braying mule. Disturbed from his own sleep, he’d watched porch lights flicker on up and down the street from his bedroom window as neighbors peeked out their front windows to see who was causing the ruckus. After several weeks, when it seemed his uncle’s midnight tirades were becoming a habit, his father called the police and had Elias arrested right on their front lawn for disturbing the peace.

  Not long after that, Aunt Carla packed up most of her family’s possessions in the back of her F150 and headed east with her children, not knowing where she was going or what she would do when she got there. Three months later Jose discovered a letter under a stack of bills on the kitchen table postmarked from Baltimore with no return address. Curious as to his cousins’ whereabouts, he read the letter but was disappointed to discover that although they were all fine, Aunt Carla hadn’t divulged their precise location.

  Jose had never seen them again.

  As he crouched beside Andrea, steadying himself on the bed’s metal rail, he knew her gangster boyfriend wouldn’t be satisfied with middle-of-the-night door pounding as his uncle had been. It was obvious now, based on the injuries she’d already sustained at his hand, that he wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if he didn’t get his way.

  If she ever wanted to be safe, she would need to disappear. Just like Aunt Carla.

  “I’ll be right back,” he whispered to Andrea as he crept out of her room, back into the harsh glare of the hallway. He wasted no time descending the emergency stairs and racing outside, to where he always had the best cell reception behind the cafeteria dumpsters. He glanced at the time as he powered on his phone. With the three-hour time difference it was already almost 11pm in Baltimore, a detail which caused him to hesitate momentarily. Was it too late to call? He quickly decided it didn’t matter and scrolled through his contacts until he found her number.

  She answered, somewhat groggily, on the third ring.

  “Aunt Carla? It’s me. Jose.”

  She sucked in air, and then, her voice came out strained. “What is it, Jose? Is everything okay?”

  “Oh, yes. I’m fine. Mom too. We’re all fine.”

  “Ay! Don’t scare me like that, calling so late!” she scolded. “There must be something!”

  He leaned against the side of the dumpster, trying to ignore the stench of decaying food scraps permeating the air. “Yes, there’s something, but it doesn’t involve the family. There is someone else though.”

  She sighed heavily and he could imagine her collapsing onto her bed, too tired from the day’s endeavors to continue standing. “What’s going on?”

  “There’s a girl, here at the hospital. Her name is Andrea, and she’s been in and out of the ER a handful of times the past few months for a bunch of different injuries. Lacerations. Contusions. A black eye. A concussion. Today an ambulance delivered her after being hit by a car. She’s barely alive.”

  There was a beat of silence before Carla spoke. “It’s a man, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  There was more silence as Jose allowed his aunt to draw her own conclusion about the reason for his call.

  “What do you want from me, Jose?”

  “She needs a place to go.”

  She scoffed. “And I’m the one you call?”

  He felt his loosely contrived plan sifting through his fingers like the sand at the playground when he was a boy. He’d always hated playing in the sand. To spend so much time creating the perfect castle only to have some other kid delight in trampling it down.

  “I thought of all people, you’d be the one to understand.” There was an unintended edge to his voice, and he hoped he wasn’t being too harsh, but he didn’t know of another viable option. He needed to convince her to take Andrea in. “He’s going to kill her, and I have to do something to help.”

  The back door to the hospital kitchen swung open and one of the staff tossed a garbage bag into the dumpster behind him, resonating with an echoing thud.

  “How long ‘til she’s recovered enough to travel?” Carla asked.

  He considered how quickly he could heal her without raising suspicions, especially from his aunt. “A few weeks. Maybe less if she’s lucky.”

  His aunt was quiet. Was she reconsidering?

  “She’d have to stay on the couch. I only have one bedroom. And she’d have to get a job and earn her keep, you hear me? Just because she’s being abused doesn’t mean she gets to freeload off of me, you understand? I’m no dishrag.”

  “I understand.” His mind began to race with the possibility of getting Andrea safely out of Phoenix. It certainly wouldn’t be easy, starting with simply convincing her to go. “Thank you, Aunt Carla. You won’t regret this.”

  She conceded, chuckling nostalgically into the phone. “You always had a big heart. Could never just stand back and watch something bad happen, could you?”

  “I guess not,” he acknowledged, remembering the time he stood up for his cousin, Jorge, on the bus when he was being teased for his wardrobe full of hand-me-down clothes.

  He said goodnight to his aunt and ended the call, realizing he only had eight minutes left of his half-hour break. If he was going to finish with Andrea, he needed to work quickly.

  Although it went against his practice of never telling the patients about his abilities, there was only one sure way to guarantee she would agree to his plan. Back at her bedside, Jose placed his hands on either side of her face and closed his eyes, allowing the heat to spread beneath her skin. However, instead of waiting until the warmth subsided on its own, he pulled away, rocking himself backward against the magnetic attraction of his power. He had never attempted to interrupt himself before but knew he couldn’t afford to heal her completely since the promise of her full recovery was his only bargaining chip. He expected the little energy he gave her would be enough to rouse her from the coma and into full consciousness by the end of his shift, when he would return with the hopes of convincing her to agree to his plan.

  CHAPTER

  13

  MIA

  Tuesday, September 6

  Baltimore

  On Tuesdays, after her shift was over, Mia picked up Thomas at Towson University, where he was enrolled as an undergrad in their education program with a concentration in instrumental music. She’d convinced him to apply for admission in February, after his brush with death during the search for Kate’s sisters - reminding him life was too short not to follow his dreams. By spring however, most traditional incoming freshmen had already applied and were being accepted, so because of
the timing, Thomas had been waitlisted. Luckily, a spot opened up for him in July, along with a sizable financial-need scholarship.

  In the end, the only real challenge had been persuading him to go.

  As Thomas tossed his messenger bag into the back and slid into the passenger seat of Mia’s sedan, she leaned across the center console to give him a kiss.

  “Aren’t you glad I convinced you college was a good idea?”

  “Are you gonna ask me that every time you pick me up?” he countered, rolling his eyes.

  Mia turned over the engine and eased the car out of the parking lot beside the Center for the Arts. “Maybe,” she said. “I’m just glad you got over being so nervous about going back to school. I knew you were going to be amazing.”

  “I’m not amazing,” he told her. “I’m above average at best. But yes, I will concede, college was a good idea. In fact, I met with my advisor this morning, and she thinks I’ll be able to pick up enough credits during the summers to finish in three years.”

  She mentally calculated how old that would make him at graduation. “So you could have your own classroom by 28?”

  “And be running my own studio by 30,” he added. “As long as we can figure out the finances.”

  Money was only part of the reason she’d agreed to move in with Thomas and Mildred when her lease was up. Every hour he was in class or working on assignments was an hour he wasn’t earning a paycheck, so since Mia had been the driving force behind his return to academia, she felt obligated to make sure they all kept a roof over their heads.

  And, of course, she was looking forward to waking up beside him every day.

  “We’ll figure out the money,” she assured him. “Besides, I think I’m going to be put up for a promotion before the end of the year.”