by Ted Dekker
“You’re playing right into his hands.” Simon stabbed at Barth’s chest. “I will deal with Smith! Me, not you! Now get rid of her body. No one can know about this.”
“And if someone heard the shot?”
“Tell them you killed a coyote.” To David: “I’m sorry about this, David, I really am. I’m closing the hospital as of now and ordering martial law. No one leaves their house without authorization. And I mean no one. We have to get this under control.”
“What about the girl?” David heard Barth ask.
“The girl stays where she is until I speak to Smith. Now clean this up!”
16
VLAD SMITH. This is what they called him because this was the label he’d chosen as of late. His true name could not be put into words, but they all knew it. Intimately. And he would see to it that they soon knew it as their own.
Vlad stood on the roof of their church as a graying dawn edged into the far horizon like the coming of an ominous tide. Overhead, their sky was clogged with dark clouds. A light breeze tickled his skin, a sensation he relished. From this vantage point, he could see all of Eden, and beyond it, the trees and fields that butted up against the great cliffs that encircled the massive sinkhole. And beyond the cliffs, the rest of the world, blinded by crisis—he could see that as well, though not with his eyes.
Not a single volt of juice flowed through Eden, not a glimpse of light, not a hint of power. Darkness and darkness alone. If the tissue-tops now soundly asleep only knew what was happening here in their little paradise . . . A rush of satisfaction flowed down Vlad’s body, and he allowed himself to tremble with that sentiment. Human juice. Such a wonderful thing.
Organism was only an algorithm—this much could not be disputed. He’d watched with curiosity as Barth, the pit bull among them, had yielded to his programming. Rachelle was a threat the man could deal with, so he would, if only to protect his security. Common sense. He’d gone after the girl earlier than Vlad expected. Then killed the other tissue-top, something else Vlad hadn’t seen coming so soon.
He may have underestimated Barth. Caution might be warranted—he couldn’t allow the man to kill Rachelle.
Following Miranda’s early expiration, David had reacted as might be expected of any tissue-top. He’d rushed to wake Rachelle but then decided to leave her in peace, though he could find none for himself. He’d spent most of the night on his face in the living room, weeping into the carpet before settling into his armchair, blinding himself with bitterness.
Blind. Blind as worms, all of them, just like the rest of the world. Most of them anyway.
Truly, the only one who was even beginning to see in Eden was the girl, and this concerned him more than he’d anticipated. What happened to the others wasn’t his concern—it was Rachelle he needed. Only Rachelle.
How many years had he waited for the coming of the 49th after being dispatched to this world with the book? Too many to count. The plan had been simple: prevent the 49th from finding all five seals before the appointed time by undermining her in this reality, not only in the other, thus ensuring her failure. To that end, this world had no clue what it was in for, not only here in Eden but far beyond.
He’d known that she was the 49th the moment she’d been born in the other reality—the shift in his consciousness could not be denied, though he had to wait five more years for her to be born here.
Blind. The irony was brilliant. This was his doing, naturally, first by tormenting her mother. Even more ironic was the fact that Rachelle had been born here, in a bubble called Eden, of all places.
Some said there was no irony or coincidence. That the light only used the darkness to reveal its brilliance. The thought brought a shudder to his bones.
He would prove them wrong.
Curious, he’d tested her to see if she might write him into the book before understanding her power. As expected, this simple tack had failed. As had his second approach in the sanctuary. Now that she’d discovered the First Seal and tasted the power of Origin, one might think he’d suffered a blow. Not so. She would eventually use her power to save what she valued. There was still time. More than enough.
As long as he found his way into the book before Rachelle found the first three seals, his purpose would remain intact.
Vlad blew out a long breath, smoothed his greasy hair back with both hands, and pressed them lightly together, as if in prayer to the great cliffs before him.
All organism was algorithm. It was time to change up the programming a bit.
He spun around, strode for the access ladder, and quickly descended. The streets were dead at this early hour, and they would remain empty—the Judge’s martial law would see to that.
He headed down the dotted lines on Third Street, dead center. He’d left his white jacket in the hospital’s basement room, where he’d taken up residence. Other than his skin, he was now all black. Reconsidering the decision, he wondered if it might have been more interesting to wear the white jacket and sing at the top of his lungs for all to hear. Let them see their god in all his glory.
It took Vlad less than three minutes to reach the Moses residence. Simon would be holed up in his safe room, hoping against hope that his battery-powered ham radio would allow him to make contact with the outside world. It would not.
Either way, the Judge was a concern only in that he was in the way. The situation required a few tweaks.
The front door was locked. Vlad gripped it with a firm hand, twisted hard, and heard the tumblers in the locking mechanism snap. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.
Silence smothered the house. He made no attempt to walk with caution—the time for subtleties had passed. Truth be told, he enjoyed the sound of his shoes walking on the wooden floors.
He entered the hall and tried the first door. A boy’s room. Peter, sound asleep under his blanket, oblivious to the fact that he likely had less than a few days of life left on this earth. So sad.
The next door opened to the young daughter’s bedroom. She might survive, he hadn’t decided yet. All of the children might survive, lucky little brats. Or maybe not.
Knowing now that the last door had to be the master bedroom, Vlad entered, closed the door behind him, and walked up to the king-size bed without so much as glancing to see if Hillary was still asleep.
She lay under the covers, snoring softly. He’d chosen her for two reasons, the first being that she was Simon’s wife. The second being that he required a particularly malleable brain for his purpose. All tissue-tops—excepting the Mystics, who knew their true identity—were compliant, of course, but some, like Hillary, were more easily reprogrammed than others.
Vlad leaned over the bed and slapped the top of her head with enough force to startle the dead. The woman grunted and jerked up, eyes wide.
“Hello, Hillary. So nice to see you this fine morning. I see that your husband has abandoned you again.”
She gaped at him, clinging to her covers, and she was about to scream, so he clamped his hand over her mouth and shoved her back down into the pillow.
“Hush, hush.” He touched his forefinger to his lips and held her firm as she struggled. “Shh, shh . . . It’s Vlad. Vlad Smith. You remember me, right? I’m the new god in town. God will only hurt you if you don’t listen to him and accept his gifts. So I need you to shut up and listen.”
Eyes like saucers, she quieted. The fear-of-god talk was over the top, but with her kind, it sometimes actually worked.
“I’ll let go of your mouth if you promise me you’ll listen quietly. Nod if you agree.”
She faltered for only a moment, then complied.
“Good.” He lifted his hand from her mouth and nodded his appreciation when she remained silent. “Are you listening?”
Her head bobbed once more.
“Even better. Now . . .” He sat down on the bed next to her. “I’m tempted to seduce you, Hillary. I really am. Just for the fun of it.” He cocked his head and looked at her. “D
o you think I’d succeed?”
She was still in too much shock to respond with more than a tiny squeaking sound, so he helped her out.
“Of course I would. Few women manage to resist my gentle charm and surprising understanding of their deepest longing to be heard and loved.” He let his words sink in. “I’m not sure you even know what it’s like to be truly loved. Not the way Simon loves you, with all his conditions. Be this, do that, don’t do that or else . . . That’s not love, sweetheart. That’s called conditional manipulation. Nearly all marriages are based on it. Is yours?”
She blinked.
“Never mind. Actually, I don’t know how to love unconditionally either. I’m bound by polarity, just like you. So I’m going to cut to the chase. Fair enough?”
She was still staring. He slapped her on the cheek, just hard enough to get her attention.
“Say yes.”
“Y-y-yes.”
“You see how easily the fear of punishment manipulates?”
Hillary still wasn’t getting the hang of things, so he slapped her again.
“Answer me when I ask a question.”
“Yes,” she said.
Vlad felt a stab of pity for the poor thing. She’d been lied to her whole life. The thing about humans that few of them realized—they were powerful beyond imagination. Law just blinded them to it.
The thought of that power bothered him and he made a quick decision, no longer desiring to play his game with her. Not here. Not this way.
“Close your eyes, sweetheart. Do as I say.”
She looked unsure.
“Go on. Just close your eyes.”
Her eyes fluttered shut.
Vlad slugged her right temple with enough force to knock her out cold. She slumped back, at peace. His small gift to her.
He grabbed her nightshirt and dragged her body from the bed, across the floor, and to the door. There, he scooped her up with one arm, hiked her over his shoulder, and walked from the house the way he’d come in.
“I’ll have you back in a couple hours,” he muttered. “Just before curfew.”
Plenty of time to flip some switches.
17
WHILE SHADOW MAN’S darkness was blinding minds in Utah, I was crossing deserts and mountains with Talya, my teacher in another world. Earth, two thousand years in the future.
For five more days we traveled, and each night I knew the rhambutan fruit, which silenced my mind so I wouldn’t dream. On each of those days, Talya asked only one thing of me: “Watch. Look. Lift up your eyes. Change your cognitive perception, or, as it was written in ancient Greek, practice metanoia. Reclaim your innocence. Become like an infant, a little child who hasn’t yet learned not to believe the impossible, because, in truth, nothing is impossible.”1
I tried. And when I tried too hard, Talya told me to try by not trying. That didn’t help me either. So I must confess, for those first five days I mostly learned that I could not see whatever he was seeing.
This didn’t seem to disturb Talya in the least. He would offer me a slight grin and wink. “When the student is ready, the teaching will appear. You aren’t ready yet, dear daughter. You have more lies to unlearn.”
Each day, he would find a suitable spot to practice ceremony, which was only a formal form of metanoia, he said. Each day he would casually bend the world in some small way that left me awestruck, whether it be lighting a fire without a spark, or calling a bird to sit on his shoulder, or finding water where there was no spring. All so I would know it was possible.
I learned about many things those first five days.
Was he a magician? Elyon forbid, he said. Magic was done in polarity by attributing special power to special words. Religions used words this way. It worked on occasion, but even when it did, it was belief in the power behind the words, not the words themselves, that carried weight.
“Take the name of God,” Talya said. “There are many ways to say God in different languages. Which word has power? Many tribal Christians in ancient Earth call God Allah Nogoba, meaning ‘God our Father.’ Do the words Allah Nogoba have less power than Elyon our Father or God our Father or Origin or Source? None have power in themselves. These are just labels that represent God. Only identification with the essence beyond the label can shift polarity. Attachment to specific words is an attachment to magic. We don’t use magic.”
I learned why some sacred teachings seemed to be lies but were not. For example, Whatever you ask in my name will be done, Yeshua taught.2 There was no exception to this, Talya said. Ever. In his name meant “in his identity,” but few ever asked in that identity because they didn’t know themselves in that identity. They didn’t re-cognize themselves in that identity. They didn’t ask in his identity. Instead, they asked in their earthen vessel identity, using the word Yeshua or Jesus or Justin like a magical incantation with little to no effect.
Faith in that identity rather than the earthen vessel self, he said, was the actual evidence of the unseen—the very substance of it. But few had true faith in the unseen. Their faith was in the seen, the world of polarity, which thus mastered them.
“How can I awaken to my identity Inchristi?” I asked.
He winked at me. “You will see.”
I learned that the Horde were still giving chase, less than a day behind us now. Jacob, son of Qurong, wasn’t one to be denied.
I learned that my body had retained the muscle memory of the ancient Roush arts in a way that surprised even Talya. The movements, taught by certain elite Roush who were highly skilled in aerial combat with Shataiki, were like a dance to him. They came back to me quickly as he demonstrated around the fire each night. If I couldn’t change my perception, at least I could spar with him. I had impeccable reflexes. But of course, Talya said. I had thousands of hours of practice growing up in the desert with the Mystics.
I learned that Judah, his lion, liked me. Enough to let me pet him and use his belly as a pillow. I quickly fell in love with Judah.
I learned that the Albinos who lived beyond the Great Divide were vast, over a million strong, compared to the Albinos led by Thomas of Hunter, who numbered only a few thousand. Albinos who’d followed Justin by drowning in the red lakes comprised four basic religious sects: the Elyonites, the Gnostics, the Mystics, and the Circle under Thomas.
The Elyonites were by far the largest sect. They had developed many doctrines of what was right and what was wrong based on ancient writings once canonized as Holy Scriptures. But they missed the point of these writings, Talya said. They clung to the world of flesh and bone and thus were bound to the world of polarity as much as the Horde. They, like the Horde, used the sword if they believed it suited Elyon’s purpose as interpreted by them. They believed Elyon would one day rid the world of all Horde and all heretics who refused to embrace their holy doctrines.
The Gnostics were a splinter group who argued that all flesh was either evil or of no consequence. They claimed Justin could not have existed in the flesh because flesh was evil. In cursing the material world, they made the material world their enemy and thus were enslaved to struggle.
The Circle under Thomas of Hunter were deeply loving Albinos who longed to be Mystics without yet knowing it.
Then there were the Mystics. Forty-nine including me. Seen as the worst kind of heretic by Elyonites and Horde alike. I would soon know what a Mystic was, Talya said. And by know, he meant know, as in experience. I wasn’t sure I wanted to experience being a heretic among people who lived by the sword.
I learned that it was Paulus, Paul the apostle, who’d coined the term Inchristi. He’d used the term more than any other designation in his speaking and writing. Without it, nothing made sense, Talya said.
It was also Paulus who insisted that experiencing Inchristi was done by fixing our spiritual sight on what was unseen—that is, the eternal self—not on what was seen—that is, the identity of our earthen vessels.
“If you lose your eyes, are you less than a person with
good working eyes?” Talya asked me once.
“Of course not.”
“And what if you lose the function of part of your brain?”
I shook my head, thinking of those born with disabilities. “No.”
“How about all of your brain?”
I thought about it but didn’t respond. Who would I be without all of my brain?
“Before you were in the womb, Elyon knew you. When you know yourself as Elyon knew you before you were born, then you will know your truest self. This is the unseen—not your earthen vessel, which is seen.”3
This was the task I was trying and failing to do.
So, as I said, I did learn about many things, but I still couldn’t see the way he saw. In fact, if I knew any lesson in those five long days of travel toward the Great Divide, it was how little I could see. I felt rather helpless, even knowing that this was Talya’s intention.
With each passing day my frustration at not being able to see the unseen grew. It spread like a dark fog, which in turn drew me even deeper into frustration to the point where trying to “fix my eyes on the unseen” began to feel like a cruel joke.
I finally caved in on the sixth night. We were in the heavily wooded slopes that led up the final mountain range before the Great Divide pass, which we would reach early the next morning. The Horde were gaining, Talya said. We had to hurry.
“What will happen when we reach the pass?” I asked. “You keep talking about the Great Divide, and I’m beginning to wonder if it’s some kind of metaphorical divide in my mind. Where are we going beyond it?”
“Not we, daughter. You.”
“Without you?” The thought terrified me.
“You will see.”
He’d given the same answer to a hundred different questions, but when he said it then, my resolve to be a good, diligent student failed me completely.
“No,” I said, half under my breath. “I don’t think I am going to see.”
He was leading me by five paces, following Judah. They both stopped at the sound of my words. Judah turned his big head and looked back at me. Talya did not. His mount snorted once, then continued up the pathless route where Judah led us.