Night Shadows (Children of Nostradamus Book 2)

by Jeremy Flagg

  “That’s her name?”

  Mark nodded. “Wasn’t this in your files?”

  The man shook his head. “She is only referred to as the child of Project Nostradamus.”

  Chapter 3

  2033

  “The man has a church?”

  Jasmine nodded.

  Conthan stepped out from behind a trashcan in the alley. He had opened the exit portal just outside their destination. The green trashcan hid them from prying eyes as they teleported between Boston and Hell’s Kitchen. The small alley opened onto a street lined cars in various states of disrepair. With the missing tires, burned out hoods, and shattered windows, it looked more like a nuclear bomb went off here than north of Boston.

  “I’m for the man and everything,” Conthan said, “but isn’t this getting a bit ridiculous?”

  Jasmine didn’t reply to his rhetorical question. He turned to see her pulling the hood of her shirt over her head, hiding her face. She wrapped her head until only her eyes could be seen. He pulled his own hood over his head, mimicking her movements.

  “You’d think I’d be used to this.”

  “Yes,” she said softly, “you would.”

  He flipped her off. “You owe a dollar to the bitch jar.”

  She silently held up her hand, extending her middle finger in response.

  He eyed the church, shocked to see the chaos of midtown hadn’t reached its doors. The fence along either side exhibited amateur graffiti, but not on the building itself. Either the keepers of the church had been vigilant about washing the walls, or the vandals stayed clear of the building. Where the cars had no windows, the church still held a beautiful rose window high above the four sets of double doors.

  A dozen steps led up to them. Both Conthan and Jasmine froze as they checked the street. In both directions, there was almost nobody, only a few people walking with their eyes focused on the ground. Conthan raised his eyebrow at her. She nodded. He and Jasmine were the least friendly of the bunch. He didn’t like her attitude, and she didn’t acknowledge him most of the time. It had become a game at this point, seeing how far he could push her. He frequently referred to it as his second superpower.

  In this duo, he was the escape artist, she was the muscle. He couldn’t help but chuckle. I’m such a pimp. My bodyguard is an impervious battle-crazy woman, he thought to himself.

  It was sad Vanessa wasn’t around to smile at his twisted thoughts. He had to admit he was getting fond of having somebody hear his inner monologue. Once he got over the shame of having dirty thoughts about his team members, everything else was a piece of cake. Now, without her on the mission, he would have to save the comment for when he saw Skits.

  They walked across the street, stepping around a woman pushing a carriage filled with her belongings. He stopped to watch as she started mumbling to herself. She hobbled behind the carriage, stopping long enough to look in a trashcan. It broke his heart to think people lived this way. Though it wasn’t much better living in a barren wasteland being irradiated.

  Jasmine pointed to her eyes and forward to the doors. He nodded in reply. It had taken him forever to get used to her ability to carry an entire conversation on a mission without speaking. At least with Vanessa they would speak mind to mind, but Jasmine, she just expected them all to be mind readers.

  They jogged up the stairs and she pressed her face to the door, listening for people on the other side. Conthan spun about, watching the street, making note of every living person. He scanned the nearby rooftops. There were six people within eyesight, each of them going about their business. He couldn’t help but wonder how many cameras scanned his face, looking for defining features. Dav5d made sure they were scrubbed from every database available to the world, but Conthan believed somewhere, somebody was studying his features, waiting till they could capture him.

  Jasmine pulled at the large wooden door. As she did, Conthan noted the metal cuffs around her wrists. It was almost exactly a year ago he had first fought her in the courtyard of the Facility, and since then she hadn’t removed the jewelry around her wrists. The few times he had gotten close to them, he noted there were no seams. He wondered if they had been grafted directly onto her body, but knew better than to ask. It dawned on him they may not be accessories for her abilities, but maybe something more akin to handcuffs. Someday she wouldn’t treat him like a pariah on the team and he’d be able to ask her about them.

  The entry was larger than he expected, a lobby big enough to hold a few hundred people. The area spanned the width of the church, paintings of the disciples hanging along the way, tipped and uneven as they detailed the spread of Christianity throughout the world. The building was old, so old that the plaster slipped from the walls, exposing the bricks underneath. Tables held unlit candles, available for parishioners to take with them to the service.

  Conthan listened to the sound of murmuring as they reached the doors leading into the nave. He reached for the handle, stopping to see Jasmine make the sign of the cross. In over a year he had never asked if she was Catholic. Her complexion hinted at the Latin American blood in her veins, but it never crossed his mind she might be a religious person. She continued to surprise him.

  He pulled the door back and she slipped inside. When she didn’t call for him to wait, he followed. Jasmine’s body didn’t move, but her head turned back and forth, absorbing the scene. Conthan listened to her whispering a prayer to herself. He didn’t have the heart to tell her God didn’t look down upon this house anymore.

  Light fought to enter through blacked out windows, leaving the massive room shrouded in shadows. Great pillars reached to the ceiling, the masonry covered in discarded crutches and prosthetic limbs alongside several wheelchairs.

  The room was the size of a basketball court and along each side, columns rose to arches that seemed to direct the viewer toward the apex of the church. People shuffled their feet about the floor, kicking up broken tile. He could only imagine how beautiful it had been once upon a time. Now it seemed another forgotten relic in the age of technology.

  A couple hundred candles looked as if they were floating in the air, casting an eerie glow about the room. As he passed the columns and walked closer to the sanctuary, he noticed the people holding candles were wearing little more than rags. The stench of body odor and urine filled the air, and even those who looked like they could be citizens of financial means wore a modest attire.

  The people stood, the pews either missing or stacked against the wall in shambles. At the times in the service when they should have knelt, they remained standing, rocking back and forth and muttering something in a language Conthan couldn’t make out. He pushed his way past the first row of people in a hope to get closer to the front of the church. He wished he could teleport through the crowd to avoid the scent rubbing off on him.

  A woman next to him gave him the once over. He was worried she would begin screaming at the top of her lungs. She extended a hand holding a candle, the dripping wax coating her skin. As he received the candle she went back to rocking back and forth, muttering the same indecipherable phrase as before.

  The crowd stopped moving and their heads lifted, waiting for something to happen at the front of the church. Conthan continued to push through them. A man with only one arm held a candle, staring hopefully to the altar. Where there should have been an arm protruding from his shoulder there was a short stub, looking as if the rest had been crushed years ago.

  From somewhere among the crowd a drum sounded, one loud bang after another. The room froze at the thunderous noise. Without movement, the smell seemed to increase. Conthan wished he had something to cover his nose.

  A man moved across the front of the church, holding a golden staff with a cross upon it. The man wore a tattered robe, making him look like a homeless monk. Each of the members of the audience stared intently at the man, waiting as if he’d provide sagely words. Several people stood around the man at the altar, but only he seemed to belong in this broken h
ouse of worship.

  From this distance, it was hard for Conthan to make out much about the man. He was bald, with a slender, stretched-looking face, but otherwise, Conthan didn’t believe he’d give the makeshift priest a second glance on the street.

  “I welcome you here this twilight,” the man opened. His deep voice rang out over the crowd, whose murmuring dropped suddenly. “You have gathered this day to bask in the radiance of our saviors. You have come from near and far so that you too may be able to gaze upon those mighty supreme beings. You have gathered so that your souls may take refuge in the light of our new gods.”

  Conthan noted the silence in the parishioners. The man’s voice enthralled the masses. A man at the head of a crowd—Conthan found it difficult to not question his motives. Religion had never been part of his life. Was it even a religion? Where did the line between divine and cult lie?

  “Angels have fallen from the skies.” He raised his hand up, motioning to the windows high above. “Many say Nostradamus predicted the end of the world, but what he truly predicted was the end of life as we know it. Living among us are Children of Nostradamus, emissaries of the Lord himself, come to save our poor wretched souls.”

  The mumbling of the crowd made it obvious they were in agreement. Conthan turned around to see Jasmine studying the faces of those around them. He shot her a look, asking what they should do about the situation. She ignored him and continued scanning the participants.

  “Never thought I’d be concerned about being called a god.”

  “As our brethren are raised above humanity, allowed to stretch their wings, we must support them. For it is the Children of Nostradamus who have been called upon by a higher power to do God’s work.”

  He wondered if the man giving the speech had ever met a Child in person before, or if he was just running his mouth. Perhaps it was even possible he was a Child himself and he was turning his flock into his brainwashed slaves. Conthan couldn’t imagine somebody being stupid enough to congregate with this many people and brag about your affiliation with the most hated individuals on the planet.

  Conthan started to search through the crowd as the man continued to boast about the higher power responsible for his ability to teleport. The faces of the people around were weathered, eyes sunken, their skin dirty, their clothes frayed and their hygiene questionable. This flock weren’t Children, they were simply people attempting to get off the street before curfew took place.

  As he jumped from one face to the next he froze. Close to the front of the church there was a man in a brown bomber jacket. He stared directly at Conthan. It wasn’t the man himself that was awkward, it was that he continued to stare with his large smile stretched from one ear to the next. Conthan didn’t need to think about it very long before he recalled the two men in the Warden’s office. They hadn’t moved the entire time he fought the large man, almost like empty shells.

  “What the hell?” he mumbled to himself.

  He pushed forward through the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd. The man in the bomber jacket had vanished, nowhere to be found. Conthan spun about, looking for where he could have gone to.

  The priest continued his sermon as Conthan worked his way to the front of the church. As he got closer he could see that the man was older, at least in his sixties, and his most prominent feature, the beaklike nose on his face.

  “These gods deserve our unyielding support. These gods deserve our devotion. These gods deserve nothing less.”

  Conthan turned back to the crowd, scanning the faces again. Twenty-Seven had told them these gatherings had become commonplace. One of the refugees she safeguarded had spoken about the church and how it had become increasingly common to see a Child of Nostradamus among the congregation. Since the Facility, it had become even harder to find Children. Either they hid underground, or the government was finding new ways to silence them.

  “It is likely even now, we are amongst gods. They walk among us, testing us, making sure we are loyal to their cause.”

  When Conthan turned, the man made eye contact with him. It was possible the priest himself was a Child. If he was, it was disturbing to think he had created a cult to worship himself. But after the last few months, something like this didn’t shock Conthan anymore. He continued to force eye contact with the priest, waiting for him to out him and Jasmine.

  “These gods will save us.”

  The man looked back into the crowd and then to Conthan again. Conthan turned in the direction the man had been gazing. For a moment, he thought he saw familiar spikes of hair. He pushed into the crowd again, shoving people aside as he worked his way to the side of the church.

  “Gretchen?” he called loudly enough everybody nearby could hear.

  “Let us stand strong as our faith is tested.” As the monk delivered the warning, the doors to the church exploded open, splinters flying in all directions. Conthan didn’t need the dust to settle to know there were synthetics about to storm the house of worship.

  “Gods save us!” the man yelled.

  The crowd rushed from the doors, storming the altar of the church in an attempt to protect themselves. There were no easy exits, and even if they could run, the synthetics would follow. The robots held up their hands, revealing the small armaments mounted to their forearms. Conthan recognized them as street patrol, with no major weapons, but as vicious as their heavy duty cousins.

  The muscles in his body clenched and before he had time to process, his powers awakened. He could summon portals in midair without a problem. Opening them between two touching objects or opening one inside a mass, that required effort. The portal stretched open effortlessly beneath the feet of the closest synthetic, swallowing it whole as it fell through.

  A team of six turned to five. The world slowed down for a fraction of a second as his powers searched for an exit. Somewhere over the Hudson River, a robot fell into the wastewater of New York City.

  “They are among us!”

  Dav5d referred to it as non-linear thinking. Just because a portal opened facing one direction didn’t mean the exit had to do the same. He closed his hand and opened a portal underneath Jasmine. As she dropped into the blackness, she fell out of the returning portal behind the machines. He might not get along with her, but they had practiced enough that they were dangerous in a fight.

  She grabbed on to the head of one synthetic and pulled hard, trying to tear the skull from the body. One fired bullets at her chest, but the slugs fell to the ground. Jasmine had probably utilized her gift before the doors exploded, making her skin as dense as the bracers she always wore. The downside to her abilities was that her muscles didn’t adjust as quickly. For the first few seconds, she was slower, clunkier, and incapable of doing anything other than be a human shield.

  He closed the portals as the synthetics turned to face their adversaries. He secretly hoped somebody in the crowd had a weapon and would join in the fray, but the threat of death had sent them fleeing. If he was capable of opening larger portals, he could drag all the synthetics into the river. However, there were unfortunate limitations to his abilities.

  Conthan stood ten feet from the closest synthetic. “Hey, tin bucket, how about you pick on somebody your own size?” He had to wonder if the increase in synthetics meant an increase in human operators or if the machines had been left to their artificial intelligence.

  The one being jerked around by Jasmine raised both forearms and fired a barrage of bullets. Conthan ripped open the air in front of him. The bullets entered the darkness and exited through a portal next to the synthetic’s skull. They pelted the machine, denting the metal exterior.

  “Dammit,” he said, “no laser weapons.”

  The head severed from the machine. Jasmine’s muscles increased to cope with her mass as she grabbed the arm of another machine and tore it free. Metal rang out as she used the arm like a bat, clobbering the humanoid and knocking it to the ground. She slammed the heel of her foot down, crushing its skull.

  “I s
ee you have everything taken care of,” he said.

  Two of the synthetics grabbed on to her and wrestled her down to one knee. The third synthetic fired directly into her forehead. She grunted as the bullets pelted her skin. She once told him she could still feel, not as clearly as when her powers were off, but enough that she’d bruise later.

  The base of his skull tingled, turning to a slight pain as he pulled from the internal well containing his powers. The portal resisted, and he pushed harder. He’d have a headache in seconds, and if he continued, he’d be bedridden with a migraine.

  “Open,” he yelled.

  The top half of a synthetic was swallowed by a portal tearing through its midsection. A second portal opened next to him, dumping out the remains. Jasmine took the opportunity to throw one machine against a wall and climb on top of another.

  Conthan kneeled down to see the small red light in the synthetic’s head still recording. Sparks shot out of the frayed wiring around its midsection. He leaned in closer to the synthetic’s face. He pulled back his hoodie and smiled. “I don’t know who you are or what you want with these people, but we’re coming for you. The Children of Nostradamus are angry.”

  The crowd watched, their mouths agape, as Jasmine finished tearing apart the last synthetic. Conthan made note of one man, his face freshly shaven and his hair cleaner than any of the other vagabonds’. Looking at the shoes, he could see they had been freshly polished. Against the others, he stood out like a sore thumb.

  “They’ll be back,” the man said. “You need to get out of here.”

  Jasmine stepped up next to Conthan and chucked one of the synthetics onto the ground. “We are not your gods. Now be gone before you get yourselves killed.”

  Conthan opened a portal and the two of them exited the church.

  ***

  Half a city away, Vanessa seized the arm of a synthetic and snapped it in half. As the other arm attempted to take hold of her, she spun the machine around and tore at the head, severing it from its metallic spine. She chucked the body toward another synthetic, sending it to the ground.