by David Beers
“David needs you. Maybe more now than ever before.”
They sat for a while longer, neither speaking. Rhett figured he’d said what he came to say, and if the situation’s direness wouldn’t move her to act, then he’d just have to work harder—and sitting here wasn’t doing that. Eventually David would come … he hoped.
“Let us know when you’re ready to contribute again,” he said, then stood up and left the apartment.
Rhett spent the remainder of his day doing what David had asked him to.
He started interviewing people.
They were running out of time and options. David didn’t know how much information the traitor had given away, but he was reluctant to flee—which had been discussed.
So, Rhett and Christine started interviewing people separately. He’d made it through seven, and now understood it didn’t matter what he said, people were frightened. Some of them, despite Rhett’s insistence that they weren’t suspects, refused to believe him. Some were so scared that Rhett couldn’t tell if they believed they were the traitor—somehow having forgotten their treacherous deed.
It wasn’t a good day, and Rhett didn’t foresee anything getting better.
People weren’t ratting out their neighbors yet, but he thought it might happen soon. He thought the entire compound might start smoldering, a fire built from fear and desperation. No one wanted David’s wrath now, and perhaps it’d been a mistake to kill Stellan for more reasons than they originally thought. Everyone had known David’s abilities were far reaching, but few actually thought he could do that. They had thought him powerful, but not a god.
Now people were beginning to think his powers knew no bounds.
And that bred fear.
Rhett knew fear often bred irrationality, and from there unwise actions might be taken.
Rhett had gone to Rebecca today because he—and David—needed her. What the compound needed, what everyone living inside it needed, was David. He had to lead, and Rhett was truly frightened.
For the first time since meeting David when both were merely teenagers, Rhett wasn’t sure David could still lead.
It was nearly blasphemous to think such a thing.
Yet, the compound’s unrest was growing, and David remained in his study, desperately reaching out to the Unformed but ignoring the rest of the world.
Sending Rhett and Christine out to interview people.
Night had fallen, the SkyLight outside mimicking a quarter moon. Rhett had just finished his shower and was dressing again. He’d slept six hours the night before and thought he would be lucky to get four tonight. The exhaustion was resting heavily on him despite the pills he’d taken earlier. He had started taking uppers as soon as he woke up, and then again near the end of the afternoon. The pills affected both him and his nanotech, using a symbiotic affect to give him energy, but eventually his body would win out and he knew it.
Still, it wouldn’t win tonight.
He had to go to David and tell him what he was thinking. Rhett didn’t want to, but knew his duty. That’s what Rebecca was missing, her blood kinship to David polluting her mind. They may be siblings, but she had a duty that surpassed their shared parents.
The duty lay with David—partly—but what propelled Rhett onward was the Unformed.
That’s what he’d given his life to, and they were all tools for It … including David.
Now, the most important tool was breaking, and Rhett had to try and fix him.
He was about to leave his apartment when he heard the knock on the door.
It’s me, Rebecca said at the same time.
Rhett’s eyes lit and the door opened for her. I’m in my room, he said.
He slipped his shoes on and looked up from his bed as she reached the doorway. “You decided to get up.”
“Let’s not talk about it.”
Rhett nodded, completely fine with that decision. As long as she was up and not sulking in her apartment, then she could help him try to douse this growing fire.
“Where are you going?” Rebecca asked.
“To see David.”
“Did he call you?”
“No. I’ve got to talk to him about today.” Rhett stood up.
“What happened?”
“He has us interviewing people, and if he doesn’t step in soon, people are going to start eating each other.” Rhett walked to the door, Rebecca stepped aside, and he moved into the hallway. “Are you going to come?”
“Yes,” she said.
Rhett nodded, feeling happy despite the coldness he was showing.
They exited the apartment together and Rhett talked about what he’d seen today, catching her up as best he could. He hadn’t told David he was coming. He hadn’t wanted to.
David needed to feel the urgency, and simply showing up might convey it better. Rhett was willing to use whatever tricks he could.
It took about ten minutes to reach David’s study—Rhett hadn’t even considered trying his apartment. He spent all his time here now.
He stopped in the waiting area just outside and looked at Rebecca. “You can’t argue with him about Stellan anymore. That’s done. It’s over with. I’m telling you, if we don’t get this under control—if we don’t find this fucking traitor—this place is going to implode. You can forget about the True Faith or the Prevention Division. We’ll destroy ourselves.”
“I get it,” she said. “I won’t say anything.”
Rhett turned to the door. He needed another second to gather himself, because despite his duty and desire, he didn’t want to do this. He looked at his feet, then closed his eyes.
It’ll be fine. He’ll listen to you. He’ll fix this.
Rhett opened his eyes and looked up. He knocked on the door.
“David, it’s me. Rebecca is here too,” he said, loudly enough so that his voice echoed in the waiting room.
They waited 30 seconds or so and then Rhett turned to Rebecca, his eyebrows raised. She shrugged.
“Knock again.”
Rhett did, banging harder this time. “David!”
No one responded and he heard nothing from the other side.
The whites of his eyes lit green and he searched inside David’s room for any nanotech to communicate with. He found none. The room was offline.
“No nanotech,” Rhett said.
“I know. I tried, too,” Rebecca answered from behind him.
“What do we do?”
“Move,” she said.
Rhett stepped aside and Rebecca walked to the door. She leaned in, putting her ear to it, and then jiggled the doorknob. It turned easily underneath her hand.
“You’re just going to go in?” Rhett asked.
“What else are we going to do? Sit outside and keep calling for him?” She asked, looking back at him.
Now Rhett shrugged. He’d never simply gone into David’s domain without being called, certainly never done this.
Has he ever not answered you, though? No. Any time you’ve come to him, he’s been there.
And now he isn’t.
Rebecca pushed on the door and it swung open. Both stepped inside the dark study—the SkyLight outside its only illumination. Rhett stood just inside the entrance while Rebecca went to the wall, manually turning on the lights.
“David?” Rhett called again as he gazed about the now lit room.
“He’s not here,” Rebecca said.
“His apartment?”
The two turned and went upstairs. They knocked, but only briefly, and found that door unlocked, too. Rebecca and Rhett searched the apartment, turning on lights as they went.
“He’s not here!” Rhett called from the back bedroom.
He listened as Rebecca made her way to him.
“Not out there either,” she said, entering the bedroom. Her eyes lit up and Rhett knew she was searching the entire premises. ClearViews were now flying around the compound.
“How many are you using?” he asked.
“A hun
dred,” she said. She was staring past him at the wall, but he knew she saw nothing in this room. A hundred ClearViews were a lot to handle at once—perhaps too many. Rhett waited, anxiety building inside of him. He felt it in his chest, a pressure just behind his solar plexus that might actually crack bones if he didn’t find some way to relieve it.
David didn’t ever leave.
Ever.
He grew angry. He screamed. He ranted. He grew depressed. He was mercurial, but he was always here.
Five minutes passed in silence, Rhett careful not to bother Rebecca, though he desperately wanted to ask what she saw.
She eventually spoke, her eyes returning to their normal color. “He’s not here. Not unless he’s in someone’s apartment, but I doubt that.”
Rhett took a few steps backward and half sat/half fell onto the bed. He stared at the floor beneath. Is this what David felt like when he couldn’t find the Unformed? Was it this sense of emptiness? Of loss?
“I …,” Rhett started, but couldn’t find the words.
“He’ll come back,” Rebecca said, though her voice shook as she spoke. For a few minutes she’d been in control, been like David as she searched for her brother. For a few minutes.
But now she sat down next to Rhett.
“He’ll come back,” she repeated.
Rhett closed his eyes, trying to fight off a headache that had appeared just behind his forehead. The compound was about to burst into flames and their leader was missing.
“Call Christine,” he whispered. “She needs to know.”
“I—,” Rebecca said, but her words died off. A few seconds passed, and then only slightly more controlled, she said, “Okay.”
Rhett lay back on the bed, lying horizontally across it with his feet hanging off the side. He waited without a clue about what to do, but searching for some answer. Any answer.
Because tomorrow people would start asking questions to which Rhett wouldn’t have answers.
Why did he leave? Where is he? Is it because of the traitor? Is the Ministry coming? Are we going to die?
And they would grow louder, those questions. They would reach a cacophony, uncontrollable. Chaos.
Stop, he thought. Stop. Don’t panic. You don’t know anything, only that David isn’t here right now. That’s all. It doesn’t mean the world will end. People will understand. They’ll have to.
He thought the words, but didn’t believe them.
“She’s not here,” Rebecca said.
“What?” Rhett turned his head to look at her.
“Her nano isn’t answering mine, but she didn’t shut it off in her apartment. I used a ClearView to go inside. She’s not there and I didn’t see her anywhere else. She’s gone.”
Rhett’s lips tightened as he felt a scream growing inside of him. He forced it down, creating an almost physical pain in his throat. “It’s not her,” he whispered through clenched teeth. “She’s not the traitor.”
Rebecca said nothing, not for a long time. Eventually, she lay back on the bed with him, shoulder to shoulder.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Rhett said.
Thirteen
The Prophet
Christine walked with David, fear and awe dominating her emotions. Fear because she knew at any moment she could die, either by David’s hand, or the Earth below her.
Overwhelming awe because she’d never seen anything like this.
They were at the bottom of the Earth, though the phrase didn’t truly make sense in her own mind. More accurately, the two of them had descended as close to the Earth’s core as any human had ever been.
The two of them stood on a bridge looking out at molten crust. The bridge … Christine wasn’t sure how it survived the heat. Some sort of digital protection was wrapped around it; she could see it as she walked, each step creating green waves.
Above her, machines flew this way and that. She didn’t know how they saw, if through lenses, or if programmed to know their work through other ways. Whatever David and his followers felt about the True Faith, the Ministry had as grand ambitions as any Christine could imagine.
Machines were beneath her as well, diggers of some sort that resembled cones. Lava splashed off their sides, creating the same waves that Christine saw beneath her feet.
She and David walked on fire but were not harmed.
She could feel the heat, but only barely. It felt like she stood in a hot room, though not quite hot enough to make her sweat. She should have been burning alive.
Yet, David somehow protected them both.
“I want you to come with me,” he’d said back at the compound.
“Come with you? Where?” she asked, only realizing a second later she regretted the question. If David wanted something, it was to be given.
“Below. To the core. I want to walk with the machines operating there.”
Christine didn’t know what to say. She didn’t know what it meant. She said yes, and it didn’t dawn on her until they were hundreds of Corineters from the compound that David might be about to kill her.
Even now, looking out at the wonder before her, death weighed heavily on her mind.
Because he might think her the traitor, and if so, then she was as good as dead.
Or, he might simply be angry at Stellan’s sacrifice, which had been her idea.
Even with such thoughts, the beauty before her lifted her spirits.
The two had remained silent for much of the trip, and now, under David’s protection, they stared at wonders the human eye shouldn’t have been able to see.
“David …,” she said. “Why did you bring me here?” Christine hoped her voice didn’t show the underlying fear.
“I didn’t want to be alone anymore,” he said. He stood on the other side of the bridge, looking down at the tunneling machines and the fire trying to eat them.
“Why here?”
“I haven’t come in years. I wanted to see the progress, I guess.”
“You’ve been here before?”
“Yes. A long time ago.”
“How are you protecting us?” she asked.
“The same way I do everything. My connection with the Unformed.”
“Do you understand how, though?”
“Do you understand how you walk? Or do you just command your muscles and they move?” David asked.
She was quiet for a few minutes, feeling that any question she might ask would only make her feel stupid. Eventually, though, another one pestered at her mind. “How far down can you go?”
“As far as I want. Nothing here can hurt me.”
“Then why does the traitor matter?” Christine asked. “If fire can’t hurt you, what can the Ministry do? What are we waiting for? Let the traitor do what they want, and when the True Faith comes, destroy them.”
David said nothing for a while but finally only said, “Do you want to go further down?”
“No,” she said and laughed. “I’m close enough to death, thanks.”
“We’re always close to death, Christine, but I think it’s life we actually fear.”
She didn’t hear him lift off from the platform. She didn’t even realize he’d left until she saw him moving beneath her. He was floating downward, his back facing the fire below, his eyes the Earth’s crust above. They were alight, the pupils and irises burning gray.
“I’m just a tool,” he said to her. She could hear him, even though his distance was increasing. He was speaking, at least partly, through her blood. His blood. The Blood of the Touched. “I don’t decide when the Unformed comes forth. It does.”
He continued his descent.
“The traitor doesn’t make me worry about being hurt. If they come for me, I can protect us and fend them off for a long time. Not forever. They’ll weaken me if it’s a prolonged siege. I’m worried about the traitor because if they come and the Unformed isn’t ready, then we will eventually lose. I can fight but not until the end of time. That
’s what matters here, the timing. That’s why finding them is so important.”
Christine couldn’t speak back to him, not from this distance—not even with her blood. It was a power only he held, like so many others.
She watched as David floated down to the fire beneath … then gasped as he disappeared under it.
David felt the liquid fire pull him in, almost greedily—as if it were alive and hungry, not insentient elements of the periodic table.
David sunk deeper into its grip, his eyes open. He saw nothing but sloshing red and orange hues around him, looking angry that they couldn’t consume his flesh.
Why had he come here?
Why did he bring Christine? Why not Rhett? Why not Rebecca?
Much of what he did made little sense to him anymore. Stellan … David had thought it a necessary sacrifice, but looking back now, he realized how foolish he’d been. The traitor cared for nothing, probably seeing Stellan in the same light as they saw David. And so he’d killed an innocent man. He’d burned someone alive who held faith, who had loved both David and the Unformed.
Why am I here? he asked himself again.
David closed his eyes, forcing the lava from his vision.
His parents’ faces came to him from the darkness of his mind. Long dead, but somehow still with him. The heretics who left the Old World when it grew too dangerous for them. They’d brought their son, all three hiding in the submarine that took them to the True Faith.
Subversive to the core, David wondered what they had thought would happen. If they somehow made it to the True Faith, would it be easier to spread their message that God didn’t exist? Would they be safer?
They weren’t, he thought. In fact, they may have been less safe.
David had been five. His parents traveled through fringe atheist groups for a few years. They were angry, though, and not just at the state of the world. Not just with the Ministries. They’d been angry with the atheists too, feeling they weren’t doing enough to further the cause.
Radicals—even for the radicals.
And what would they think about what you’re doing now? Are you doing enough?
His sister had been born when David was six, their parents arranging for nanotech to be placed in her at birth. Rebecca had been different from the rest of her family—the only one born inside the True Faith, she possessed abilities none of them ever would.