The Nosferatu Chronicles: The Aztec God

by Susan Hamilton

  She looked toward the ruins of the Colosseum, silhouetted against the artificial lights of the city.

  “Did the Vambir hold gladiatorial contests?” she asked.

  “Vambiri had nothing that resembled this foul world,” said Dujot.

  “There was a caste system in place, was there not?” she pressed.

  Dujot looked harshly at her. “Who told you about that?” he demanded.

  “Just something I overheard years ago,” she replied casually. “It’s amazing what adults will say when they believe a child is too young to understand the conversation.”

  As Jirza spoke, she changed the enunciation of the consonants to include the telltale Lowcaste clicks. Although Dujot’s face betrayed no emotion, Jirza detected the fear pheromones being released in his system.

  “Come,” barked Dujot, “we’ve wasted enough time already.”

  The three made their way to the parking garage where their all-terrain vehicle awaited. For the next week, they would travel at night and sleep during the day in the protection of underground parking stations. All three were prepared for violence. If a traffic stop went bad, or if a gang of youths decided to steal their vehicle while they were sheltering in one of the parking stations, they would not hesitate to enter berserker mode and kill every last witness.

  After arriving in Poland, they took a car ferry to Finland. All went as planned, with the ferry reaching its destination after dark as scheduled.

  Setting off in their all-terrain vehicle into the frozen tundra of Russia, they were now vulnerable in the isolated wasteland. Although they had brought along enough fuel to cover the distance to Kozheozersky Monastery, they had no choice but to cover their vehicle with a tarp and shelter inside during the daylight. Although it was highly unlikely they would be discovered in this deserted region, if they were they would be hopelessly cornered. It was a nervous time for all, but at last, they arrived at the lake that skirted the monastery.

  “Build a fire,” instructed Dujot. “As soon as the monks see it, one of them will come for us in a rowboat. They have been welcoming tourists in this way for centuries. Secure the devices in the trees along the shore. Wait until the rowboat has nearly reached us before initializing them.”

  Tolum and Jirza removed the devices from their backpacks. Posing as art students, not a single border agent they had encountered had suspected that each of the colored pens they carried was in fact a mini lasgun. The “pens” were not to be used as guns, however. Once pressed, a button would initiate a build-up of laser particles. After fifteen minutes, the build-up would become critical and a massive explosion would ensue.

  DEBRIEFING

  Lifeboat Brig, 2012

  Tolum and Jirza awoke to find themselves handcuffed to a table inside an interrogation room. In front of them was a mirror. Although they could only see their own reflections in it, they knew that those on the other side were closely observing them.

  “Help us!” cried Jirza.

  “Senfo fitted us with implants when we were infants!” exclaimed Tolum. “As soon as he knows his coup has failed he will transmit the kill order!”

  Kevak pressed the speaker button.

  “Senfo, Johep, and Gyran are missing,” said Kevak.

  The siblings looked at each other sadly and tried to hold hands, but their cuffs prevented them from doing so. Instead, they leaned inward and touched their heads in a touching display of affection.

  “We will be terminated any second,” said Jirza. “We will give you as much information as we can before that happens.”

  Primus D’Hal was participating in the debriefing via video link.

  “You are the children of Senfo and Gyran?” asked D’Hal.

  “We are lab experiments created from the combined DNA of Senfo, Johep, and Gyran,” said Tolum. “Our reason for existing was solely to carry out this obscene mission.”

  “How was that possible?” asked Kevak. “They had no access to the required technology in Newlun.”

  “Over a century ago, a rogue Vambir was attracted to their fake pod homing beacon,” said Jirza. “The beacon signal was duplicated using an implant that was removed from a Newlun female who died in childbirth.”

  “There was such a female,” said D’Hal to Kevak. “Johep kept the pregnancy a secret until the female died.”

  “This rogue Vambir, who called himself Dujot,” continued Tolum, “had a pod of his own and he had used the technology to accomplished amazing things. The fake beacon signal was a trap, and he also received an implant.”

  “Dujot…Dujot,” repeated Kevak.

  Suddenly, the memory of the black market dealer who gave him hemo-rations in return for a passenger assignment came back to him.

  No…it couldn’t be the same Dujot!

  “How did this Dujot help Senfo?” asked Kevak.

  “For several years he took us outside Newlun on training exercises that taught us how to mimic human mannerisms,” said Jirza.

  “And to hunt,” said D’Hal.

  “And to hunt,” admitted Tolum. “Blood ingestion was necessary to attain human form in order to blend into society.”

  “How was your presence kept a secret from us in Newlun?” asked D’Hal.

  “We lived in a safe room,” said Jirza.

  “It was constructed with lead lining in order to evade detection,” said Tolum.

  D’Hal looked at the other council members seated at her table. “Comb every inch of Newlun,” she instructed. “Do a spectral analysis and look for lead spikes. Begin with the quarters of Senfo, Johep, and Gyran. Hurry!”

  “What did Senfo and his accomplices plan to do with the lifeboat?” asked Kevak.

  “Their cerebral implants could only be disabled by a command directly entered into the lifeboat mainframe,” said Tolum. “Your decision to keep the mainframe isolated from the other networks made a hack impossible.”

  “After we disabled their implants,” said Jirza, “we were to fly the lifeboat back to Newlun. Once they took possession of it, we would be given our freedom along with hemo-nectar to return to our original form.”

  “We never believed them,” said Tolum, “but we always hoped their plan would be detected and someone would find out about our predicament.”

  “They killed our sister Thuri,” said Jirza. “The first time we were force-fed blood, she went mad.”

  “The hemostim sickness!” murmured Kevak.

  “That’s what they called it,” said Tolum. “For three days we watched her fight like an animal while tied to a chair. When it became clear that she could not be cured, they terminated her.”

  “Kevak, stand by!” exclaimed D’Hal. “A lead spike is registering near Johep’s chamber!”

  Once again, the siblings touched heads and whispered their goodbyes to each other. All who watched were struck with pity for the hapless pair.

  Several of seconds of silence passed as D’Hal waited on more information.

  “They’ve been found,” said D’Hal. “All dead.”

  Jirza instantly sat up straight. “Don’t touch Senfo!” she cried. “He grafted a kill device to his palm! It could still be triggered if he is moved. ”

  D’Hal relayed Jirza’s message and waited for a response.

  “The device is there,” said D’Hal. “No one will touch him.”

  “There should be a portable terminal in the safe room,” said Tolum. “If the hard drive is disconnected, the kill command can’t be transmitted.”

  “Disconnect the hard drive,” ordered Kevak.

  “Acknowledged,” said D’Hal.

  All eyes were on the siblings to see what would happen.

  “The hard drive has already been destroyed,” said D’Hal. “There appears to have been a major feedback surge.”

  The siblings looked into each other’s eyes and smiled.

  “We’re saved, Brother!” cried Jirza.

  “They have found a stasis pod in the safe room,” reported D’Hal.

/>   “I want every nano-bit of data extracted from it,” said Kevak.

  “We’ll transmit everything directly to you,” said D’Hal. “Standby.”

  As they waited for the pod data, Kevak sought more answers from the siblings.

  “What is the last thing you remember?” he asked them.

  “We had placed the feedback devices in the trees as Dujot had ordered,” said Tolum. “As soon as we were rowed to the other side of the lake, they self-detonated.”

  “We activated our personal cloaks,” said Jirza, “and walked unnoticed past everyone during the pandemonium that ensued.”

  “Personal cloaks?” asked Kevak.

  “Dujot was able to transfer the pod’s cloaking device,” said Jirza. “It only lasted a few minutes, but it gave us enough time to find the mainframe without begin detected.”

  “He’s had over four hundred years to learn about its technology,” said Tolum.

  “Once we located the mainframe,” said Jirza, “Dujot began entering what we thought were the commands to disable Senfo’s implants.”

  “After the first code inputs, the keystrokes became different than the ones we had all memorized,” said Tolum.

  “I asked him what he was doing and begged him to stop!” exclaimed Jirza.

  “Out of concern for Senfo, Johep, and Gyran?” asked D’Hal.

  “No, we had no love for them,” admitted Jirza. “I begged Dujot to stop because I knew if he tried to tamper with their implants, it would most likely trigger the kill order for ours.”

  “Jirza tried to pull his arms away, but he backhanded her with such force that she was flung against the wall and knocked unconscious,” said Tolum. “I also lunged at him, but he moved out of the way and grabbed my head, slamming it into a monitor. When I came to, there was a large shard of glass on the floor. I picked it up and drove it up into his brainstem. He never saw it coming — his full attention was on getting the commands entered into the mainframe. That’s the last thing I remember.”

  “For years we tried to think of a way to transmit a warning to either Kevak or D’Hal,” said Jirza. “But we were watched round the clock.”

  “Why didn’t you make an alliance with Dujot?” asked D’Hal. “He was as much a prisoner as you were.”

  “We found out plenty about him from his pod,” said Jirza. “While we were running simulations of the mission, we accessed his pod’s location history. Everyone who was associated with him had a bad ending. Since the sixteenth century, Dujot has assumed many aliases at the top echelons of power, beginning with the Aztecs.”

  “The Aztecs?” asked Kevak, trying to suppress a feeling of dread.

  “He loved to brag about the disguises he had taken on through the centuries,” said Tolum. “Most times he would pretend to be a holy man — a ‘Friar Alonso’ or a ‘Rasputin.’”

  “He said the Aztecs worshipped him as the father of one of their main gods,” said Jirza.

  “What name did the Aztecs use for him?” asked Kevak, already knowing the answer.

  “Mixcoatl,” said Tolum.

  “What’s to become of us?” cried Jirza.

  “You are as much Vambir as we are,” said Kevak as he struggled to maintain his composure. “You will begin hemo-treatment immediately. For the present, you will remain incarcerated separately until we can check your accounts against what is in the digital records of the lifeboat, Dujot’s pod, and anything that can be reconstructed from the destroyed hard drive. We apologize if this seems cruel and will do all we can to make you comfortable until the investigations are concluded.”

  “We understand,” said Tolum.

  “Your brig is a palace compared to what we have had to endure,” said Jirza.

  VERIFICATION

  Lifeboat Conference Room, 2012

  “Do they speak the truth?” asked Kevak.

  “Everything that could be checked has been verified,” said Emanui. “Dujot was captured by Senfo and his accomplices in 1948. They immediately began attempts to artificially produce Vambir offspring using the technology from his pod. There were several unsuccessful mutations before Tolum.”

  Kevak put his hands over his eyes in a feeble attempt to block out the horror of what he had just heard.

  “The successful birth order was Tolum, Thuri, then Jirza,” continued Emanui. “Thuri succumbed to madness, just as they claimed.”

  “Dujot was the Vambir responsible for what happened to Vrin and Kwetz,” said Kevak.

  “The pod telemetry confirms he was in White City at the same time as they were,” said Emanui.

  “What has been found after examining the lifeboat’s mainframe?” asked Kevak.

  Tariq cleared his throat. “Apparently Dujot managed to cloak a receptor on Senfo’s portable terminal. The commands entered into our mainframe caused the receptor to overload and destroy the hard drive, but before that was done, a kill order was issued to the implants of Senfo, Johep, and Gyran.”

  “How?” asked Kevak.

  “We’re still trying to figure that out,” said Tariq, “but the autopsies showed all three implants were swollen — which is what they were designed to do if the host ingested blood.”

  “So Dujot transmitted a code that tricked the implants into acting as if the hosts had ingested blood,” said Kevak.

  “That is what we believe,” said Tariq.

  “The risk!” exclaimed Kevak. “He knew about Senfo’s dead man switch!”

  “Maybe he designed a kill command that disabled the muscles while the chip was swelling in his brain,” said Tariq.

  “Does the surveillance footage capture the command strokes Dujot entered into the mainframe?” asked Kevak.

  “The camera aimed at the mainframe was disabled just before Dujot took it over,” said Tariq.

  “Does the footage show who disabled it?” asked Kevak.

  “Dujot and the siblings were cloaked when it was done,” said Tariq.

  “Did Dujot’s autopsy reveal anything?” asked Kevak.

  “He had made numerous alterations to his body using pod technology,” said Tariq. “Some of the changes, like an artificial stomach, were made in order to blend in with humans. Others, like a prosthetic forehead shield, were for protection from projectiles.”

  An image of Dujot’s lifeless face appeared on the screen. With the prosthetic forehead removed, there was no mistake in Kevak’s mind that it was the black market dealer he had encountered on Vambiri.

  “Was Dujot’s death caused by the stab wound to the back of the neck inflicted by Tolum?” asked Kevak.

  “The glass shard ripped through the brainstem,” said Tariq. “His cerebral implant showed no indications of swelling, so the stab wound must have been the cause of death.”

  “Once all tests have been concluded, Dujot’s remains are to be exposed to daylight, in accordance with Vambiri tradition,” said Kevak.

  Tariq exchanged looks with J’Vor.

  “There’s something else, Father,” said J’Vor.

  “Go ahead,” said Kevak.

  “The last thing downloaded into the mainframe was an amplifier detection program,” said J’Vor. “We believe Dujot was going to use it to locate Kwetz.”

  “How?” asked Kevak.

  “By looking for infinitesimal frequency changes in signals bounced back from the bottom of the lake,” said J’Vor.

  “Will it work?” asked Kevak.

  “Jasper and Nadia are searching as we speak,” he said. “J’Vor and I will take the next shift.”

  “Once Kwetz is located, he must remain in stasis until the Newisla arrives at Vambiri,” said Kevak. “The same goes for Jirza and Tolum.”

  “The three of them together pose a great risk,” said Emanui.

  “We are aware of the risk,” said Kevak, “but leaving them behind is not an option. They were all powerless against those who manipulated them. The future of the Vambir depends on the success of our in vitro program. These three adolescents are the
only bridge between the current aging population and the embryos. Our aging process was dramatically slowed on Earth. When we return to Vambiri, we may die before the embryos have matured into adults. There’s a slim possibility that those three will be the caretakers of a thousand Vambir infants. We must make every effort to rehabilitate them. The fact that there will be no humans on Vambiri to tempt them with the bloodlust bodes well for their prospects.”

  “What of Pocatello?” asked Tariq.

  “She will witness the Newisla’s departure,” said Kevak, “from the inside of the brig. After that, she is to be returned to her fellow Travelers. She will tell them what happened to their Aztec god, and with any luck they will realize that their cult served its purpose. There is nothing to fear if she tries to make her story public. No one is going to believe her, and all traces of the Vambir will be long gone by then.”

  “We are going to set a murderer free?” asked Tariq.

  “In what court of law could we prosecute her?” asked Kevak. “Quetzalcoatl, as she imagined him, exists no more. Everything she did was in service to him. If the other Travelers believe their god has left Earth for his ancestral home, their cult will disband. The only chance of them believing that is if they hear it from her.”

  VALEDICTION

  Newlun, New Years Day, 2013

  Maz Pocatello’s mouth was curled tight in resentment. As she clutched her restraining cuffs, she glared at Kevak from across the table.

  “Don’t try to convert me to your Conquistador god,” she said.

  “I would never force anything of the kind on you, child,” said Kevak. “I pray that one day you come to know and love Iam of your own free will.”

  “Why am I here, demon?” she asked.

  “I wanted to thank you,” said Kevak. “Were it not for you and your fellow Travelers, my wife and son would have been lost to time. We don’t belong here. Our home world has healed itself from the cosmic holocaust that engulfed it. All of the Vambir are now accounted for, and it is time for us to return. You will witness the launch of the Newisla on a monitor in the brig, and immediately afterward you will be returned to your fellow Travelers. Tell them what you saw here today so they may understand that your sojourns to White City were not in vain.”