by David Beers
“No,” Rhett said. “No, you didn’t.”
But he knew the truth.
The First Priest hadn’t lied.
“I did,” Christine whispered. “I told her that there were ships coming for him and she said she would tell him. He would have known they were there. He would have been looking for them. She’s the traitor. It was her. And … she watched Stellan die.”
Rhett saw Stellan’s face as she spoke his name.
“She watched him fry up there in the air, turning us all into murderers, and she said nothing. She just sat there and watched.”
Rhett blinked, but only from habit. He held no interest in flushing the tears from his eyes, hardly recognized they were there at all.
“David’s dead because of her,” Christine said. Rhett didn’t know if she was talking to him or herself, but there wasn’t any need to tell her about the Priest. There wasn’t any need to say anything at all—maybe for the rest of his short life. “It’s all over, and she caused it.”
The wall in front of them flickered briefly—just as it had done in Rhett’s previous room—before falling away.
The First Priest walked in. Rhett blinked again, this time trying to clear his eyes, as he could only see a hazy figure with shockingly pale skin.
“She knows, and you do too,” the man said as Rhett finally got a clear view of him. He was smiling.
Rhett had largely ignored him earlier. He had simply lain on the bench and kept his eyes shut, trying to show none of the emotions running through him. Now, though, looking at this bald follower of Corinth, he saw everything at once.
The man was taking joy in this. Real pleasure—perhaps a pure pleasure.
Would you be any different? If you stood where he does right now?
“I wasn’t lying,” the First Priest said. “Rebecca Hollowborne was our informant. She’s going to keep informing us as well, just like the two of you.”
The wall behind flickered again, but didn’t close. Instead it showed Rebecca, sitting in some nondescript room. Rhett blinked hard, trying to completely clear his tears because he wanted to see her. He wanted to view Rebecca as …
As a traitor, because you haven’t before.
She only looked forward, not knowing she was being watched. Not knowing, or not caring.
The Priest turned around and looked at the video. “You see, we know that the Black will return. At least, we think so. Its time is running out, but It may yet try again. If It does, we’ll be prepared; we’ll know everything we possibly can. We erred the first two times, but,” and the Priest turned around to say his next words, “we seemed to get everything right this go round.”
The screen behind him didn’t flicker off, but the First Priest was done with it. He walked toward Rhett, stopping within an arm’s length. “Where did both of you rank within his hierarchy? Was his sister higher? Or did he know she was corrupted? It makes me wonder, this powerful Prophet, how great he could have been if he didn’t understand the woman who grew up beside him was going to cause his downfall? What do you think?”
Rhett said nothing. Tears flooded his eyes again, hot and blinding in their ferocity.
“Was he perhaps … a false Prophet?” His words dripped with sarcasm.
The First Priest looked to Christine. He stepped slowly toward her, as if taking her in for the first time. He moved as close as he had with Rhett.
Rhett could still see him, though Christine was out of sight.
“You’re the angry one, is that it? He’s the level-headed follower, and you’re the one with a head full of steam? Or is he a coward and you the warrior? How did you all classify yourselves beneath him?”
Christine said nothing, and Rhett watched the Priest take a step closer.
“You’re going to help me, even if you don’t know it yet.” The wall behind him flickered and then disappeared. The Disciple walked through the open space, entering the room. The same one that had carried Rhett to the One Path, then chased David through the sky like a rabid hound. He remained behind the Priest, showing no sign of having ever met Rhett at all. He looked as though he saw no one else in the room, but was standing alone.
And that fits perfectly, doesn’t it? Because to him, there isn’t anyone else here.
“What I want from you, from both of you, is anything that might help me stop your bastard God the next time It tries infiltrating Earth. And you’re going to start giving it to me tomorrow morning, understand?”
Rhett no longer looked at the Priest, instead watching the Disciple. Rhett understood the power the man held. “Christine—” he started to say, but immediately knew he was too late.
She spat in the Priest’s face, yellow phlegm sticking to his cheek.
His eyes widened a bit and he stared forward—clearly unable to believe what had just happened.
A moment or two passed and then his eyes relaxed, a smile forming on his face. He reached into his robes and pulled out a white handkerchief, using it to wipe away the spittle.
“I’d hoped you would say no, but hadn’t expected it to be with such ferocity,” the First Priest said.
“No,” Rhett whispered, unable to help himself. Knowing what was coming.
The First Priest looked over for a second, his smile widening as he did. “I forgot. You’ve met the Disciples. You’ve had some experience.” The First Priest looked back to Christine. “You don’t have any, but only for the moment. You see, we Priests spend much of our time in contemplation, trying to divine Corinth’s will, as well as the best ways to put it in motion. Given this segregation of duty, we need people who can act in ways we can’t.”
The First Priest took a few steps back, creating an open path between Christine and the Disciple.
“Allow me to introduce you to a man of action,” the First Priest said.
The Disciple didn’t move at all. Rhett couldn’t see Christine, but he didn’t need to. Her screams told him everything with perfect clarity.
Four
Raylyn hadn’t been able to pull herself away from Manor. First in her thoughts, and then visually. She’d gone to see him nearly as soon as she came to, having no recollection of fainting in front of the First Council. Surprisingly enough, she found she didn’t care at all about that—about what any of those five thought anymore. It wasn’t just the First Priest she held high disdain for, but each one of them that had looked down on her as he delivered the news that they knew would wreck her.
Raylyn had woken up in her bed—the only one she had anymore, the bed inside Corinth’s Shrine—and immediately went to find Manor. She hadn’t said anything, hadn’t even entered the cell, only watched him sitting next to another of the weapon’s followers.
She didn’t stay long, found standing in front of him too brutal.
She went back to her room and waited, not knowing for what. Corinth’s Blood rested in her pocket, and when she wanted, she could feel it against her leg. She had a coin and nothing else.
A coin.
And nothing else.
It was a shocking thought, something that wouldn’t have been comprehensible when she first saw the blood red object floating across the air to her. Two months ago such a thing would have been all she ever wanted. Now? It sat in her pocket, but she wouldn’t pull it out to look at it. She didn’t want to be reminded that it was all she had.
She hadn’t wanted to think it possible; it was a mistake. Manor wasn’t part of the Black.
Yet when she looked into his eyes, she knew the truth. There’d been no denial, no mystery about why he was trapped in a cell with some strange man. He hadn’t said a word, and in doing so, said everything.
One of her room’s walls now only displayed a video of his cell, his image on almost all the time. The other man was removed at some point, but Raylyn didn’t care about him. Rhett Scoble and those like him would be dead soon.
Which means Manor will be, too.
She watched him as the hours passed, drifting in and out of sleep, but
unable to keep him from filling her mind. Even asleep, she dreamed of him. She would find herself sitting next to him in that cell, alternating between crying and screaming right in his face, “WHY?”
She’d wake up though and only be alone. Her and her coin. No one to scream at, only a live feed of him plastered across the wall—reminding her of what she had lost.
You never had it to begin with. It was all a lie.
Eventually, Raylyn rose from her bed and shut the display down, leaving a blank white wall where Manor had been. She didn’t know what the First Priest would think of her plan, but was confident he would let her know the moment he found out about it.
She made her way through Corinth’s Shrine. She walked slowly, not truly wanting to reach her destination, but understanding it was either this, or waiting alone in her room for … nothing.
There wasn’t any fate approaching Raylyn, and she knew that now. No lover to hold at night, to worship Corinth faithfully with. She had a coin and nothing else, and going to this man now was perhaps a way of closure. Perhaps not, though. Perhaps it was simply a way to not feel alone anymore.
She reached his cell. A Disciple stood to the side, looking just like Rogan had in that other lifetime—before everything crumbled before her eyes. She paid him no mind, and he returned the same courtesy to her.
Open, she told the wall. It flickered out of existence and then Manor was in front of her.
He was in the same position he’d been when she left her room, laying on his back across the bench. His left arm was over his eyes and his chest rose up and down slowly.
Why haven’t they killed him yet? The question rose unbidden in Raylyn’s mind. He wasn’t one of the inner sanctum. He was ancillary, if that. Just a foot soldier. Yet he’s still here, alive, and you have free access to him.
Manor’s arm raised from his face and he looked over to her. He stared for a second and then brought his arm back down, blocking out the world.
Raylyn didn’t leave, but stepped in further. She told the wall to close and listened as it sealed her and this traitorous creature off from anyone else.
“Why?” she whispered, her voice shaking even at such a low volume.
“To which part?” Manor asked. He sounded slightly better than dead, but only slightly. As if any emotions he once experienced had passed from existence, and whatever kept him speaking would soon too.
“Both,” she said, not needing explanation. “Why did you join? And why did you lie?”
“Do you remember one of our first conversations, Raylyn? When I asked you about your job?”
“Yes,” she said.
“You projected how strongly you believed onto other people. You couldn’t fathom that anyone might actually love Corinth less than you, despite the fact that your entire job consists of capturing people who don’t.”
Raylyn didn’t know how to respond, so she said the only thing that came to her mind. “That’s all bullshit.”
“In that projection is where your original sin lies,” Manor said, eyes still closed. “Or rather, the faith beneath that projection. Because others feel for their gods just as you do yours, and they always have. Why do you love Corinth?”
He spoke calmly, completely different than the way Raylyn felt and the way he’d looked when she’d come before. He’d been a wreck then, but now he spoke as if teaching a class that he’d seen 100 times before.
“You’ve thought about all of this before, haven’t you?” she asked. “Just asking questions that you’ve had ready since we first met, and that’s not fair!”
The last words ripped through the room.
When silence came again, he answered. “You asked why did I join, I’m trying to tell you. Why do you love Corinth?”
“Because He saved us. He gave us life when the world tried to kill us. He created everything we have, and we will give thanks forever because of it.”
“No, Raylyn. You love Corinth because you were taught to. That’s it. There’s no other reason. This used to be something that was known, if never really spoken about. Now, it’s treason. You worship him because that’s what you were taught to do as a child. The people in the Constant or the Old World, any Ministry, they all do the same. God is what we’re taught God is, and we’re taught it so young, we believe it until our brains cease working.”
“What do you know? You’re a traitor to your very kind. Not just me, or us, but to humanity.”
“I was taught the same,” he continued as if she hadn’t said anything. “I loved Corinth … as much as you. As much as anyone. Until I was shown something different.”
“The Prophet?” she nearly spat the word.
“He didn’t show me, but the other person that was in here did. That’s the difference between us, and that’s why it’s going to be hard for you to understand how I gave up what you consider a birthright. I saw something that was true, not something that was taught to me. I saw it when I was old enough to make my own decisions, and that’s why you’ll never get it. Because you haven’t seen it.”
“What? What did you see, Manor?”
“He showed me the Unformed, but only for a second. He showed me David Hollowborne. He showed me, briefly, how all of this was false, and how it would all fall away soon.” He paused for a few seconds, but Raylyn didn’t think he was finished. She waited, and he finally spoke again. “We were both born in darkness, and we both loved it because that’s all we knew. I was shown a ray of light and I reached for it. That’s the only explanation I have, and it’s not something you can even believe.”
She stared at him, her lips trembling and her eyes full of tears. They were going to spill over; she held no doubt of that.
“Did you love me?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Then why did you lie to me? Why did you trick me?”
“At first, because I wanted to find out what you knew about us … and then, I did it because I loved you.”
“You told them, didn’t you? Your higher ups, you told them what I said about the ships heading to the Prophet.”
She saw him nod beneath his arm.
“Then you didn’t love me.”
“I loved him more, Raylyn. The same as you love your god more than me. That’s all.”
“And he’s dead now,” she said, hoping the words cut his heart open—cut him so deep that the wound would never heal, never stop bleeding.
Manor did nothing, only sat still beneath his forearm.
“You’re going to die,” Raylyn said after a minute, still wanting to twist the knife in him. He could sit here in silence, acting as if she never mattered—as if nothing they shared mattered—but she’d be damned if she didn’t try her hardest to make him feel something. Some of her pain.
“I know.”
“It won’t be an easy death, Manor.”
“I know.”
“Does anything matter to you?”
“Yes, everything you’re saying does. But I made my decision when I took His blood. I’m not going to run from the consequences of doing such a thing now that we’ve lost. He gave me purpose and a life, and I’m as thankful for that as you are for Corinth. If I have to die because I served Him, then that’s fine. I only wish they’d hurry up with it.”
Raylyn kept staring for a time, not wanting to pull away but unsure of what else to say. She opened her mouth at least twice, but couldn’t verbalize what was going through her head.
“Did you ever really love me?” she finally asked, and the question felt silly to her. He was going to his death for crimes against humanity—crimes against Corinth—and yet here she stood like some little girl, asking her first crush whether or not it was all a lie.
“I still do, Raylyn. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved.”
She couldn’t take it anymore and turned away. She walked toward the wall and it disappeared for her. She left him in his cell and walked blurry eyed back to her room. Raylyn might have passed people in the hallway, but she didn’t kn
ow. When she finally reached her room, she fell down on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
The wall remained white, not showing her lost lover.
What does it mean? Raylyn wondered. He talks like you do. He says the same things you do, only he says them about something … evil. And, yet, he lays there and says he still loves you. That he never stopped.
How? How can he feel any of those things? One or the other is a lie. Either he loves you or he loves the Black, but he can’t do both. It’s simply not possible.
The two conjectures wouldn’t compute in her mind. They were things that couldn’t exist at the same time, yet the person she loved said they did.
Five
“I want to know about the blood. I think that’s as good a place to start as any. It’s his blood right? Or it was, at least, since there isn’t a ‘he’ any longer.”
Rhett looked at the back of the First Priest’s head. Rhett still hung from the wall, though Christine was no longer there. Rhett had seen some of Christine when they pulled her down; her body looked like a disease had taken hold of it—something that primarily affected her skin. Red dots littered her flesh, and Rhett understood what had happened.
The Disciple had used her nanotech, perhaps down to her very atoms, and that was the result. The pocks across every inch of visible skin.
Christine had been unconscious when they pulled her down.
She wasn’t now. The First Priest was looking at her. Rhett doubted she was in the room right next to his, as the wall in front of him portrayed. The wall would show Rhett whatever the Priest wanted it to, and right now, they looked at Christine.
She was hanging somewhere, just like him.
“Can she see me?” he asked.
“Not right now,” the First Priest said without turning around.
The display’s implied threat was clear. If Rhett didn’t tell this man what he wanted to hear, then there would be pain—not for Rhett, but for Christine.