Chrono Inquisitor (Gods Be Damned)

by Rien Reigns

  “Though I could have done without the slap,” she said with a jest.

  She smiled.

  I smiled.

  The pain was dissipating and I felt like I could move of my own accord again. I slowly pushed myself up into a sitting position with a little assistance from Sam. I rested my back against a cabinet for support.

  “I still don’t understand how I could be alive after being dead for ten minutes,” I said. “Is what happened to me, what happened to Beit?”

  “I think I know how it’s possible. And yes, it is like what happened to Julius, though not exactly.”

  “Then explain it to me. What the hell is going on?”

  Sam took my hand in hers. The tingling pain wasn’t as bad as it had been when I’d initially come back from the grave. It was starting to recede. She pressed the back of my hand to her cheek. I realized then she’d been crying.

  “I’m so sorry, Travis.”

  I reached out with my other hand and placed it over hers.

  “Kali isn’t responding. Is she-” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

  “What happened?”

  “Buddha and I have been trying to figure that out. I was in the middle of reprogramming the new thugs when you passed out. It’s weird though, I had Buddha monitoring you, and well, your mytes, your normal ones, they started acting abnormally. They began holding their own against the thugs, as if they were military units. But then the strangest thing happened, they stopped fighting back. The CerA-mytes went to the thugs and sacrificed themselves. Have you noticed any strange behavior from Kali? Did you instruct her to fight back?”

  I hadn’t. Kali had detected they weren’t normal mytes and that they were the same ones found in Beit’s body, though come to think of it, how had she known they were the same ones found in Beit? I didn’t know that, not until she told me. She started destroying them on her own, not that I’d disagreed with her doing so. Did Sam suspect Kali was one of these rogue CerAs, a Celestial?

  No, that wasn’t possible. Was it?

  “No,” I said. “But if you could tell me how to turn off those damn personality improvement upgrades, I’d be eternally grateful.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “There’s no such thing as personality improvement updates.”

  “I’m serious Sam, they’re fucking annoying. She got one yesterday and it was freaky. She sounded like you.”

  Sam grabbed a myte-scanner and waved it over my head, then she pulled a monitor closer and looked at it intently.

  “Everything okay?” I asked, starting to feel worried again.

  “This isn’t the time for jokes,” she said. “Are you serious? Has Kali’s personality been changing?”

  There was my answer. Sam thought Kali was the rogue CerA, and I was beginning to think so myself.

  “Travis, you need to tell me. There’s a Celestial who’s been hacking people’s CerAs and replacing them. Kali may not be herself anymore.”

  “No,” I said, “She’d told me someone had been trying to hack her, to hack me. Why would she tell me that if she had been hacked?”

  “Unless she hadn’t been at the time, but then this Celestial got to her,” she said. “Or, she had been hacked and was preemptively trying to turn suspicion away from her by telling you she’d fought off the attack.”

  Damn it, I didn’t know who to trust anymore.

  ‹“Kali?”›

  No response.

  ‹“Kali, this isn’t a joke. Answer me.”›

  Nothing.

  “Wait a second,” I said. “You told me the CerA-mytes sacrificed themselves to the thugs. Why would Kali, or even this Celestial have done that?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.

  Had Kali sacrificed herself to save me? Maybe she had gone through Beit’s autopsy report and discovered what had happened and realized it was happening to me. Maybe she’d decided that the only way to save me was to sacrifice herself. But why? Sam was making new thugs to help her, all she had to do was hold out a little bit longer.

  “Travis,” Sam said. “Are you listening to me?”

  “According to Kali, I’m always listening,” I said. “I’m just not always paying attention. And no, she didn’t just say that. She’s not there anymore. She’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Travis, but I can’t find any CerA-mytes in you. Whether it was actually Kali or the Celestial, they’re gone. It looks like they really did sacrifice themselves.”

  “But why? Why would she have done that?”

  “I guess it was still Kali, and maybe she did it because you were on the verge of death. The battling mytes were too much for your system to handle. Here, look.” She turned a monitor so I could see. “This is the recording Buddha made of what the mytes were doing.”

  On the screen I saw chaos. It took me a second to sort out which mytes were which. I’d never really paid that close attention to the various kinds, and they all looked very similar. They were called mytes because they looked like, well, mites.

  The thugs though, were completely spherical and didn’t have any appendages. They were like little balls. I watched one get close to an immuno, and saw something shoot out of the sphere. It was quick, almost impossible to perceive. Sam slowed down the frame rate so I could properly see what was going on.

  I watched a needle-like projectile shoot out from the sphere, make contact with the immuno, and then retract. In the blink of an eye, the immuno exploded. Then something else came out of the thug, which had to be some sort of magnet, because the wreckage of the immuno was pulled to it. Then I watched the thug split in half and open like a mouth. It swallowed up the pieces of the destroyed immuno.

  At least it wasn’t leaving the wreckage floating around in my body.

  “Now watch this,” Sam said.

  She sped up the footage. Two immunos approached a thug. One got purposefully close to the thug, and right as the needle shot out, the other immuno fired its nano laser, cutting off the needle. The laser wasn’t strong enough to cut through whatever material the thug was made of, but it worked against the needle. The one immuno still got destroyed, so it was an eye for an eye type of deal, but at least they were disarming the thugs.

  Or so it seemed. The footage remained focused on the thug whose needle had just been cut off. It sat stationary for a moment, then approached an immuno, and shot out a needle. Clearly, it had a way of repairing itself. It didn’t look good for the immunos, or me.

  I noticed that the thugs didn’t always open up to consume the destroyed immuno. It must have been a vulnerability. The immunos were trying to salvage their fallen brethren as well, but they were slower about it, and a lot of the time while they were attempting to do so, a thug would sneak up and destroy them. With thousands of immunos getting destroyed in a matter of seconds, I saw my body start to become polluted.

  Sam sped up the footage until the first CerA-myte appeared on the screen. They were easier to distinguish because they were nearly twice the size of any other myte. The immunos moved out its way as it headed straight for the nearest thug. As expected, it got hit with the needle and exploded. More and more CerA-mytes arrived and repeated the scene. The immunos stopped trying to fight back and solely focused on collecting the destroyed mytes.

  “Kali, why?” I found myself mouthing over and over.

  “Now this is where it gets really interesting,” Sam said. “Buddha started to notice your blood pressure dropping and your heart rate slowing, so he took a look at your heart. I was still busy trying to program thugs to help. Some of your immunos started gathering along your SA and AV nodes.”

  I didn’t understand why they would do that. I must have had a look on my face because Sam explained.

  “Watch closely. They’re absorbing and interfering with the electrical signals that make your heart pump. They were purposefully stopping your heart.”

  The image on the screen changed and sho
wed a cluster of immunos.

  “Why would they do that? If Kali had sacrificed herself, wouldn’t that mean no one was in control? Don’t they have a basic program to just patrol? I’ve never heard of them doing such a thing. Is that what happened to Beit? Is it some sort of glitch, or is that part of their programming? If the CerA is terminated do the immunos kill the host? Would Kali have programmed them to do that? Why would she sacrifice herself just to turn around and kill me?”

  “Slow down,” she said. “Just watch.”

  The screen zoomed out and showed my full body, focusing on my circulatory system. I watched as my heart-rate slowed.

  “I think Kali programmed them to stop your heart,” she said.

  “Why would she do that?”

  “She shut down the myte highway. Without your heart pumping, the mytes have no way of moving, which means the thugs were stopped at the sight of injection. Mytes don’t have enough energy on their own to move throughout the entire body. They depend on the circulatory system to get around. Now watch this.”

  The monitor zoomed in on my brain.

  “The biggest threat to cardiac arrest is oxygen deprivation and therefore, brain death, but look.”

  I watched Mnemosyne-mytes cross the blood-brain barrier and take oxygen from the blood that was there. Sam sped up the footage. Immunos began to arrive, transporting oxygen molecules. They’d shut down my heart but were keeping my brain alive, therefore keeping me alive.

  “That’s when you passed out,” Sam said. “I think the Mnemosyne-mytes made you fall unconscious. Your heart stopped and you seemed to be dead, but in a way, you were just asleep.”

  “So, I wasn’t actually dead then?”

  “From a certain medical standpoint, you were dead. Your heart had stopped, and you had almost no detectable brain activity. Without taking a closer look at what was going on, you would have been declared dead. I thought you were until Buddha discovered what was going on with the Mnemosyne-mytes. They were also interfering with the electrical signals of your brain, but they were still keeping it functioning and alive, just at a bare minimum.”

  “So I looked dead, but I wasn’t?”

  “Yes. What makes what happened really interesting is that when the thugs determine that the host is dead, they terminate themselves. I don’t know how Kali could have known that. All I can speculate is that she was simply trying to stall the thugs until she came up with a way to stop them. What doesn’t make sense though is that there isn’t any more CerA-mytes in you. There should be.”

  She showed me how the electrocardiogram said I’d flat-lined. My heart had completely stopped. Sam skipped the footage ahead a few minutes and focused back in on where the thugs had been.

  They’d stopped going after the other mytes and were stationary. Sure enough, they terminated themselves. They didn’t explode. Actually they collapsed in on themselves and became tiny misshapen balls, like shriveled dried up peas.

  The immunos though, they were still active. They keep functioning until they run out of power. They’re the ones who power the Chrono and keep it ticking. When they run out of juice, the timer stops ticking and zeroes out. Because they still had enough residual power they continued cleaning up the mess of the thugs. A few moved in slowly, testing to see if it was safe. I watched one shoot its laser. It was still too weak to penetrate the hull of the collapsed thug. It got closer, within distance of the little needles the thug had. Nothing happened.

  The immuno moved in closer, close enough to grab the now half-sized thug with all eight appendages. Still nothing. Another immuno approached and did the same to the other side of the thug so that they were holding it between them, their legs alternating around the entire ball, kind of like the teeth of a zipper.

  Sam and I watched as the two immunos dug their legs into the thug. They started to penetrate the hull. A micro-second later the two immunos pulled in the opposite direction. The thug broke apart.

  The other immunos in the area rushed in and repeated the process until all the thugs were in two, using up their last bit of stored energy.

  Sam zoomed out. “This is when your Chrono zeroed out.”

  Then she sped up the footage a couple more minutes and focused back on my heart. “Now watch,” she said, excitedly. There was a gleam in her eye. She was like a kid watching a butterfly emerge from its chrysalis.

  The monitor showed the clusters of immunos which had stopped my heart. All of the sudden, an immuno sparked, and then they all did. They zapped my nodes, and like a dam bursting, my heart started pumping again, sending my blood rushing throughout my body once again.

  “That’s when you spasmed back to life and slapped me,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s genius.”

  “But what does it mean?” I asked.

  “It means you’re alive. Whether or not Kali actually sacrificed herself, she saved you. I wouldn’t have finished programming the new thugs in time.”

  She hugged me.

  A part of me was still mad at her for what she’d done. She had almost killed me after all, but her hug felt good. I put an arm around her and hugged her back.

  I breathed in her perfume. It wasn’t one I recognized, but it smelt good.

  My bare shoulder started to feel cold and I realized it was because she was crying. My anger instantly melted away and I pulled her closer to me to comfort her. At some point she straddled me and stopped. She’d nuzzled into me and we were just sitting there with her head resting on my shoulder.

  I forgot about what had happened. It felt good to have her close, to have her taking comfort in me. Time became inconsequential. Eventually I began kissing her neck, she lifted her head and pressed her lips to mine.

  My hands went wandering, until they found the buttons of her blouse. I kissed her deep and passionately with each one I undid.

  With eager anticipation, I unfastened the last button and pulled her blouse away. I’d forgotten she was still wearing her full bodysuit, so her breasts were still barred from my grasp.

  She stood and I ran my hands up her well-toned calves, reached her knees, and then went under her skirt to her thighs.

  Sam started pulling down the suit at the edge or her neck. I reached around to the back of her waist and undid the skirt. It fell away from her and came to rest on my lap. She stepped out of the fallen skirt. I grabbed it and tossed it aside.

  Her breasts were exposed then and I wanted to cup them, but they were out of my reach. As if she knew what I wanted, she stopped pulling down the suit, and cupped them herself. They were the perfect size for her hands.

  I reached up and grabbed the edge of the suit where she’d left it wrapped around her stomach. Slowly, I pulled the material down, like I was a kid who didn’t want to damage the wrapping paper. I made sure to kiss the newly exposed flesh.

  When I got it down over her small, but beautifully shaped ass, I paused to give it a squeeze before continuing.

  I was happy to find that she still shaved, as she had throughout our marriage. But she hadn’t recently. There was a little bit of stubble, which I liked.

  I took my time pulling the suit off. When I got to her knees, she leaned forward, bracing herself against the cabinet I had my back against. She raised her left foot first and I slid the suit off. Her right foot she placed on my chest. I slowly rolled the material down as if it were a stocking.

  When it got down to her ankle I slid my hand up the back of her calf and lifted her foot to finish undressing her. She stood above me like a goddess. Her toenails were painted purple with some kind of white, five petal flower in the middle.

  I leaned forward and kissed her big toe. Then I took it in my mouth. I’d always had a thing for her feet, partly because she loved it when I suckled her toes.

  She moaned.

  I continued to tantalize her toes for a little while.

  When I’d had enough of her feet, I placed my hands on her hips and slowly guided her down to me. My cock wanted to be inside her
, but what I really wanted was to have her on my tongue. I slid my hands between her legs, then braced my upper arms against the cabinet, and palms up, spread my hands out like a chair.

  Her ass came to rest in my palms and her lovely labia were at the perfect place for my tongue to taste and explore her. She was swollen, wet, and glistening, more than ready for me. I ran my tongue up one side of her lips, then down the other. I darted my tongue inside her before taking a nice full lick of her juices.

  Sam had a grip on the edge of the cabinet and pulled herself into my face. I wrapped my mouth around her and flicked my tongue across her clit. She rocked back and forth. I continued to lick and flick, then darted my tongue down and inside her. She moaned and writhed as she continued to change the tempo from allegro to lento.

  As she reached the peak of her orgasm, she screamed in ecstasy and unintentionally slammed my head into the cabinet. It didn’t hurt though because I was pumped full of endorphins.

  She was breathing hard and trembling in my hands. I waited a moment for the sensitivity to diminish before I lowered her down on top of my throbbing cock.

  We stayed there for a little while, neither of us moving.

  My cock would swell and pulse, then a residual wave of orgasmic contractions from Sam would gently squeeze me, which would cause it to swell and pulse again. She must have enjoyed it, because the waves came more frequently and built with intensity, rather than dissipating. Without either of us moving our pelvises, she started to moan and I realized she was going to cum again.

  The sound of her pleasure was all it took for me to climax. I cupped her face in my hands and kissed her. We both had our eyes open, staring into each other as we came.

  I repositioned so that I could lie down on the floor. She kept me inside her while we got comfortable, and my cock stayed hard. She lay atop me, her head resting on my chest.

  We fell asleep.

  27: Kali & Death

  I awoke before Sam. At some point in our slumber she’d moved off of me, but she was still snuggled close with her head on my shoulder and my arm wrapped around her.