The Flooding

by Sean Hancock

  Some of the group are caught by surprise and massacred in seconds. Others among them, six men in particular, react quickly. They put up a brave and valiant fight but are no match for the cold-hearted assassins they face. Determined to protect the mother and her baby, I leap into the melee to engage one of the intruders. When I do, something happens that knocks the wind out of me: the man I was about to attack has a gray streak in his otherwise dark, shoulder-length hair.

  My master is looking straight at me. He has a broad nose and a thick beard. He raises his knife and thrusts it toward my chest. I’m too shocked to move, and I brace myself for the end, welcoming it, but instead of cleaving my rib cage, the blade passes through harmlessly and hammers into the man standing behind.

  Ashkai steps through me to continue his rampage, and I find myself, disoriented and confused, within five feet of his lighter-skinned accomplice. I watch as the highly skilled and ruthless killer parries an attack from the lion woman, countering with a fatal blow of his own. The warrior spins in my direction, his milky chest streaked with blood, and I look directly into his pale, soulless eyes.

  He isn’t just light-skinned, I realize. He’s albino.

  Rebus, gripped by a ferocious bloodlust, is making his way toward the girl who is in the final throes of labor, her child’s head almost through. I want more than anything to help, but I am less of a thing than the smoke surrounding me, a helpless bystander as the man with dead eyes, his back to me now, leans down and tries to snatch the innocent babe from between its mother’s legs.

  When I first entered this room, there was a young man, possibly the infant’s father, stroking the girl’s hair. He never left her side. Now, he’s just hurled himself at Rebus. He might as well have run into a wall. Rebus, almost nonchalantly, stabs the tall, slender boy three times in quick succession—tat tat tat—before shoving him onto the ground. Rebus turns to look at the girl again, but before he can grab her baby, another man barges into him.

  I don’t know how it happened, but I’m now standing directly above the boy with the knife wounds: two in his chest, one in his neck. Rebus and the pregnant girl are behind me.

  For some unknown reason, this young man, who has brown hair and blue eyes, is of great interest to me. I want to help him, but in my current state, that isn’t possible, not that there’d be any point anyway.

  “I am sorry,” I say.

  He’s on his hands and knees looking through me toward the girl, his gentle, intelligent eyes full of regret and despair. The life seeps out of him then, and his body slumps to the ground. My eyes are fixed on the horrible wound in his neck and the blood gushing out of it in short bursts, which slow as his heart stops beating.

  I’m about to lower onto my haunches to take a closer look when Ashkai shouts something in a language I don’t understand. I glance up. Ashkai has an arm extended and a pained expression on his face. I turn. Rebus is holding the newborn baby by its tiny, delicate ankles.

  Ashkai says something else, and his partner replies, the man’s tone overflowing with anger and indignation. After saying his piece, Rebus dashes the baby’s head against the floor, ending the child’s life before it even began. The mother, who’s already on her feet, umbilical cord still attached, starts clawing at Rebus’s face and eyes. Moving with the grace of a wave and speed of an arrow, Rebus spins the girl and slits her throat in the same devastating motion.

  While watching her bleed out and fall to the ground, I lose the ability to breathe. I feel a strange tickling sensation in the front part of my neck and bring my hands up to investigate. I become aware of a warm river of blood gushing onto my bare legs and feet. A moment ago, I was in a long black coat and sturdy boots. I’m even more perplexed when I see those exact items on the body of the dead girl on the floor, the dead girl who now looks like Suzy Aarons.

  She is now me, and I am now her.

  I look at the tiny corpse on the floor, the umbilical cord still connecting us.

  Maybe my son is still alive, I think, but when I try moving toward him, everything goes fuzzy, and my ears start ringing.

  The next thing I know, I’m lying on my back, pulsing in and out of awareness, looking at the red circle on the ceiling and the handprints surrounding it.

  The light being appears above my blood-soaked chest, materializing out of thin air, its voice in my head saying, Fear or love? It’s your choice.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  I become aware of the night sky. I’m seeing it through a complex and intricate weblike grid of overlapping red and blue lines.

  Someone or something tells me to breathe, and the next thing I know, I’m gasping for air. It’s as if I’ve just emerged from a long and life-threatening spell under water. With each inhalation comes a new batch of disturbing feelings and memories: Ashkai, Rebus, and the pulverized head of that poor, innocent baby.

  Did any of that actually happen? I ask myself. Was the child really mine? And if so, why haven’t I been able to remember until now? Did the deeply traumatic nature of the experience force me, on a subconscious level, to bury it? Are the emotional wounds I suffered the reason I have never been able to get pregnant again? Or did Ashkai mess with my mind in some way? After all, he was able to project himself into the most personal and private recesses of my subconscious mind in order to stop me from opening door 4320. Did he barricade it afterward so I wouldn’t know the truth about what he is? A liar, a manipulator, a child killer!

  My eyes well, and I want to scream, but I don’t. I tell myself I shouldn’t rush to conclusions. What if everything I saw was a deception of some sort? At the beginning of my journey, a female voice asked me to choose between fear and love. I selected the latter and started moving toward the portal of light. Before I was able to reach it, a fragment of myself disappeared into the ominous whirlpool of nothingness that was also present. I interpreted that darkness to be fear itself.

  Another voice, one I recognized, spoke then, telling me I needed to save myself before rescuing my master.

  It was the entity who tried to bully me into killing Cato. But he’s not my only tormentor; there are also the imposter and the dark fire (unless they are one and the same), all of them conspiring to drive me totally and utterly mad. Bearing all of that in mind, it’s at least possible that what unfolded in that cave—no matter how real it seemed—was nothing more than a paranoid, deranged fantasy.

  I focus on the sky above and notice what looks like a shooting star. I worry that it’s heading straight for me. And it’s moving at speed. I brace myself for a collision, but nothing happens. I open one eye and then the other. Floating above my chest is the orb, its light flickering now.

  Communicating telepathically, it says, I have more to show you.

  Using only my mind, I reply, More of what?

  The truth.

  I don’t know if I can trust you.

  Can you trust yourself?

  Speaking aloud, I say, “I don’t know.” Then I say, “I want to know where Ashkai is. I want to know if he’s still alive.”

  I can show you, but first you must drink more medicine.

  The Coca-Cola bottle filled with ayahuasca is in my backpack, which I’m currently using as a pillow. I sit up and pull it out from under me, realizing something at the same time: I’m alone.

  “Tammuz,” I say in a loud whisper. “Where are you?”

  Nothing.

  I check my watch: it’s 11:42 p.m.

  I stand and look around. Downtown Los Angeles a field of jewels. The air is a little cooler, and a strong breeze is rustling through the shrubs, plants, and trees. I can’t see Tammuz, but on the floor where he had been sitting is the Coca-Cola bottle.

  “Tammuz!”

  The orb is still there, flickering like a faulty light bulb. The grid has all but disappeared.

  Drink, the orb says.

  I lean forward to grab the bottle, taking a large, unpleasant swig, thinking how Tammuz must have reached into my bag while I was watching the carnage in that
cave, my friend keen to discover for himself what all the fuss was about. Knowing I would berate him when I awakened, he likely wandered off somewhere close. I am angry he went against my wishes, but I’m not surprised. I would have done the same thing in his position.

  What if he’s having a hard time? I remind myself he’s a big boy and responsible for his own choices.

  With the rancid taste of the medicine still thick in my throat, I lie down and close my eyes, waiting for whatever happens next.

  We can resume our work, the light being says.

  Time has passed; I don’t know how much.

  I open my eyes. The grid is back in high definition, and the sphere is as bright as the sun, although it doesn’t hurt to look at it.

  “What are we waiting for?” I ask.

  Follow.

  I start to sit up when I become aware of something unexpected: my guide is amused. She isn’t laughing, but there’s a playful energy surrounding her.

  “What’s so funny?”

  You can’t take that, the entity says, referring to my body. Otherwise how will you be able to fly?

  It’s a comment that reminds me of my Awakening, the night when Ashkai initiated my first Flooding. I wasn’t bombarded with memories of earlier lives—he said it was because my soul was still very young—but I did get a glimpse of the bigger picture.

  I left my body that night, transforming into a large, powerful owl with orange-yellow eyes, soaring the celestial heavens and even traveling through time, seeing advanced technological cites that my master said existed on other planets.

  The light being instructs me to follow, and I focus in on my heart, going deep and then deeper still. Searching for the light of my soul essence, the spark each of us carries, our connection with source. Elated because I can see an owl emerging from the light, I watch the bird grow in size and magnificence. I become the owl and burst through Rosa’s chest.

  Switching to thought-speak, I say, I am ready.

  Just as it did in that corridor when we first met, the sphere made of liquid light shoots off at a phenomenal speed, heading east toward Griffith Observatory. The white domed building, sitting on top of a large hill, is shimmering like a coin in the moonlight. Fortunately, the laws of the material world do not apply here. Any limits that do exist are self-imposed. Suffused with the belief that anything is possible, I tuck my wings and blast through the air like a rocket.

  I am traveling on the razor’s edge of reality, the narrow boundary between dimensions. The grid has disappeared, but right below me is a thin layer of what appears to be a transparent gel. The material world is beyond it. As I’m passing over the observatory, I see lots of people gathered on the lawn, their heads angled skyward, some peering through telescopes and binoculars.

  While maintaining the same blistering pace so as not to lose track of my guide, I’m able to slow the speed at which I am seeing things. I spin so that I’m on my back, looking the same way as the crowd. But in place of stars, I see sparkling handprints, bright and innumerable. In the center of them is a big red ball, which I instantly recognize as Mars. It’s a planet that many ancient cultures associated with war and destruction. That’s appropriate because right now, fragments from a huge comet are bombarding it.

  It’s a living version of the painting I saw on the ceiling of that cave. Is that why I’m experiencing this now, or are the events of this moment somehow connected to who I was in my unremembered past? If such a thing even exists . . .

  I turn to face the ground. I don’t want to lose my guide. But instead of seeing the LA skyline at night, I find that I’m soaring above New York City. It’s early morning, and the sun is rising over to my right, fingers of red and gold reaching out across Long Island and Queens. All those dull, gray buildings are radiant and alive.

  The thin layer of gel has evaporated, and I can see everything in perfect detail.

  Even though I can’t locate my guide, I have a feeling we are almost there. I unfurl my wings now, slowing to a gentle glide. The streets below—I’m passing the Empire State Building—are busy with people and cars.

  Letting instinct guide me, I swoop down between buildings, sending a message telepathically to my spirit guide (even though I haven’t seen her for a while), curious to know where I should be going next. In place of an answer, as my gaze sweeps over the mass of pedestrians in and around the Rockefeller Center, I hear a thud followed by a collective gasp. I bank in the direction of the noise. A crowd has gathered around something, so I fly above them to investigate.

  They are looking at a dead, mangled body, arms and legs at impossible angles, the corpse facedown in an expanding pool of blood. The pavement beneath is cracked and dented. It won’t be easy for the authorities to identify the victim, but I can: her name is Suzy Aarons.

  Inside my head, I hear the word follow, and I look up. Directly above is my guide, and she’s heading toward the top of the GE Building, slowly at first but picking up speed. I do exactly the same thing, the windows and concrete rushing by in a blur.

  Before long, I have eyes on Ashkai. He is kneeling on the ground, tranquilizer darts sticking out of his torso and neck. Directly behind him is the door to the stairwell, its barricade long since dismantled. An army of hostile agents is pouring through it. The helicopter is up here in the sky with me. The pilot has just about managed to regain control after being hit by that pulse of energy sent by my master.

  The pale-skinned man who shot him—the one wearing shades, a baseball cap, and a bulletproof vest—is still leaning out of the helicopter, holding onto one of the side rails. I didn’t know who he was back then, but I do now: Rebus.

  All roads, it seems, lead back to this man. But if he was once Ashkai’s ally, feeding him valuable information about Meta and the Chamber of Infinites, what motivated him to switch sides?

  It’s another unanswered question to add to the ever-growing list. Although, at least one mystery is about to be solved: the one regarding what happened to Ashkai after he pushed me from this very building. It’s true I have doubts about my master—how could I not after everything that has happened?—but it doesn’t mean that I’ve stopped loving the man who has given me so much.

  The most frustrating thing about being here is there’s nothing I can do to change what has already happened; nothing I can do to stop the twenty or so agents who have formed a circle around my master, a man who’s moments away from passing out; nothing I can do to impede Rebus, who has leaped from the helicopter onto the ground; and nothing I can do to halt the little girl who’s just emerged from the stairwell, her shiny black hair tied in a ponytail. I remind myself that while Meta’s body is that of a child, her soul is ancient and deadly.

  But what is this? I watch, as the diminutive figure with indigo eyes marches toward the ring of agents. In her left hand is a gun, and she’s firing at them. Meanwhile her tiny right palm has just released a huge cannonball of energy. It slams into the group and breaches their circle. Through the gap—is this really happening?—Meta aims her gun at Ashkai, who is still on his knees. Rebus dives in front of my master, two bullets slamming harmlessly into his armored chest.

  Who is this child? I wonder, realizing I must have been mistaken about her identity.

  The agents, all armed with tranquilizer guns, are returning fire. They’ve also formed a protective wall in front of Ashkai, who is now lying facedown on the floor.

  The child is nimble, fast, and acrobatic, and is managing to evade the slew of projectiles aimed at her. Out of bullets, the kid dives behind an air-conditioning unit to reload. She comes out shooting.

  I hear a voice inside my head, a woman saying, You can’t hide from me.

  I swoop and scan all of the faces on the roof, but nobody seems to be aware of my presence.

  Up here, the voice says, and my owl eyes find the helicopter. It’s hovering about thirty feet above the action. Leaning through the side door is a young woman. Like Rebus, she is wearing a baseball cap, shades, and a bulle
tproof vest. I didn’t notice her before. This is your fault, she says.

  Meta? I ask, but before the woman can answer, the little girl starts firing at the helicopter, forcing the pilot to maneuver out of harm’s way.

  I’m about to follow the mysterious woman when I remember that my master is in peril. Looking down now, I see Rebus and two others breaking away from the main group. Soon after, they are standing side by side, palms raised. Converging and focusing their efforts, the three men bombard the child with ball after ball of energy. One slams into a satellite dish and sends it flying, another shatters a window, and a third crashes into a wall, leaving a sizeable crater.

  The child, who is incredibly skilled, dodges, weaves, and back flips but eventually falls victim to what is a relentless and overwhelming attack, crashing to a heap on the floor. The tranquilizer guns never stopped firing, but for the first time, their darts hit home, turning the poor girl into a human pincushion.

  Everything stops.

  Silence.

  The girl, who is out of breath, stands and assesses the damage.

  “Why have you betrayed us?” Rebus asks, his face full of pain and sadness.

  The child replies, “You have lost your way, brother.”

  “Do you think I wanted to do this?” He points a finger at Ashkai, who has long since passed out. “Don’t you know how much I love this man?”

  Already unsteady on her feet, those indigo eyes losing luster and power, the girl says, “You have a strange way of showing it.”

  “I have no choice.”

  The child puts the gun to her head.

  “We always have a choice.”

  Then she pulls the trigger.