System Seven

by Parks, Michael

  • • •

  The whine of a helicopter’s turbo shafts passing low overhead drowned out the television’s report. Instructions scrolling across the screen prompted citizens to call 113 to report any unusual or suspicious individuals that might be related to the terrorist plot against the Vatican. The small bedroom smelled vaguely of cat, unwashed laundry, and the dissipating odor of human feces, all of which would soon be overpowered by the smell of parmigiana baking in the adjacent kitchen.

  Sean sat beside an unconscious Johan and watched Anki and Cristina finish cleansing his body. The old woman helped pull oversized pants up over the bulky diaper while Anki stood on the bed and lifted at the waist.

  “Franco! Get the wheelchair!” she called out.

  Her nephew leapt to comply.

  “We’ll download his new metrics to a deck then wash his hair and dye it.”

  Sean dabbed his own cheeks with a wet towel. “Cristina, what of relief?”

  The heart beat. Lungs rose and fell. He’d been running the life system for over two hours, refusing to let lesser experienced take over. Too much meta and korjé would notice – too little and the brain would starve of oxygen and suffer damage. He needed a break and soon it wouldn’t matter who took over as long as they did. He was not trained for the sustained effort.

  “Si, Terenzio is on his way, just over the river. Franco!” She turned to Anki. “I will download a new face for him. Have Franco help him into the chair.”

  “Okay.” Anki looked at Sean. Only the faintest feeling indicated he was tied to Johan in any way. “Tell me before you wear out, Sean. Cristina can help.”

  He nodded. Seconds later he cringed.

  “Sean! What?”

  Eyes closed, he sorted through information. “No. No... madre mia, no...”

  Anki knelt before him and gripped his knees. “What is it, Sean? What? What?”

  “Cath. They’ve taken him, too. At the Vatican.”

  “No! Why would he go there?”

  The shine of tears lined his eyes. At the door Cristina crossed herself and muttered in Italian.

  Anki stood and backed away, afraid her panicked emotion would distract him from giving to Johan. Questions and fear had to wait. Instead she busied herself with putting shoes and socks on Johan, imagining his return. She wanted him ready to get up and walk with her. Franco appeared with the wheelchair and together they loaded him in it. She pressed her hand to Johan’s chest just to feel the faint beat.

  A bustle from the front of the house turned out to be Terenzio. He called for his aunt.

  “In here, Terenzio!” Anki cried.

  A tall, handsome fellow with a mop of dark hair came in and immediately put a hand on Johan’s shoulder. He gestured to Sean, who visibly relaxed.

  “Thank you. Anki?” He stood and left for the back screened porch. Anki followed.

  He sat heavily on a padded wicker couch. Parakeets tweeted from a nearby cage. Rose trees lined the small backyard’s fence. The thud and whine of another helicopter sounded in the distance. The news had reported twenty-one of them in the skies over Rome.

  Anki leaned against a post. “We are at risk then.”

  “Of course. If he hasn’t cut loose, they have a chance at his meta store. The families have been alerted. I’ve work to do.”

  She felt his fear but also the complexity of something stirring. “Maria must be found,” she said. “Who can I work with?”

  “A moment, please.”

  Sean leaned back and rubbed his face, a new effort beginning. His vibe began to shift as he worked internally to forge a new identity – a disturbing feeling. Glitches and gaps signaled he’d become morphic. When he leaned forward again, the new meta arrangement was in place but still changing subtly, as if settling. He vibe was that of a stranger.

  “Right now?” he asked. “No one.”

  “You’re waiting to see how much of the Family falls.”

  His expression grew more severe. “The families are scattering, shifting. We are at our weakest. Bràthair are fewer. Later we will rejoin and grow strong again. You are a concern. You are not trained to shift.”

  “So if they break him–”

  “We assume they will. They will have a strong imprint to find you with.”

  “Can’t Clare take over and hide me?”

  “No, she is bound to you. If they scan, it will be your essence that responds.”

  “Then what can I do?”

  He hesitated. “I must do it for you. Subjugation. Binding with a new brain and body will alter your presence in Raon.”

  “Please! You have got to be kidding. We have to kill someone?”

  “You and Clare are central to everything. And right now, you are our best chance at finding Johan and Maria.”

  She was repulsed and had to hug herself. “It cannot be someone innocent. I refuse to kill an innocent.”

  “No time.” Sean’s look said that he understood the unfairness of the situation. “And for Cathbad it is all a matter of time. Minutes, hours at most.” He paused, gone distant. “We need to move. There is growing interest in this part of town and I don’t believe in coincidence.”

  “So either way someone’s going to lose their life. No other options?”

  Things were desperate but thinking of knocking someone free made her sick. Sudden death, confusion – a waking and unexpected nightmare. Then there would be their family’s nightmare; a loved one thought kidnapped or perhaps run off to do who knows what for no apparent reason. The uncertainty they’d feel... it turned her stomach.

  “When do we have to do this?”

  “Right away. Now.”

  “We bring Johan?”

  “We leave him. No,” he held up a hand at her protest. “We must leave him.”

  He headed inside.

  Anki stood in the bathroom doorway and looked at the upturned face that was again unrecognizable. Johan’s metrics were new, the face a stranger. She’d come to say her goodbye but couldn’t. Terenzio dabbed at the dye trickling down Johan’s face as Cristina massaged his hair. The old woman met her gaze and softened.

  “You cannot see him in this,” she gestured to his body. “Do not try. See him in your heart. That is where you will find him. And prepare yourself – if you see him again, it may not be in this. Be strong, signorina. He will need you no matter what.”

  She wanted to respond but words failed her. It was as if he’d died and no one would tell her.

  “Go,” Cristina waved with plastic gloves dark with dye. “Take some parmigiana with you. Franco makes the best parmigiana.”

  Low, filmy clouds perched over the sunlit beach like exotic gasses of another world. Sean and Anki drove along the seafront boulevard of Lido di Ostia, fifteen miles from the Vatican, looking for a target. She sat in the back seat behind tinted windows and scanned faces. The search for terrorists kept some people home but not all.

  Sean shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  Plagued by guilt, she had suggested an old woman sitting on an apartment balcony. The woman had less to lose having lived a longer life.

  Sean was losing patience. “You need an agile body, not a fragile one.” His intention to act rose. “We don’t have time, Anki.”

  “I can’t stand hunting like this. It’s absolutely horrible.”

  They came upon a woman fishing her purse for car keys outside the Belvedere Century hotel. Anki panicked at Sean’s sudden sharp vibe. The car slowed to a stop.

  “Anki, prepare.”

  The woman stepped from the curb to unlock her car.

  Anki started to protest but the world jerked to blackness, a shadowy non-ness that swallowed sensation. The next instant the sun blinded her and something fumbled from her hands. She caught her legs before they went out from under her. She stood outside in a world filled with new colors and unfamiliar smells. A purse hung from her shoulder. Car keys lay on the ground at her feet.

  She shuddered at the physical essence now r
inging through her soul. Skin so sensitive, her arms and legs thinner. She heard a whistle and saw Sean waving her over from the car. She took two or three steps before balance and gait resolved.

  She climbed into the front seat and Sean drove off.

  “You did very well, Anki.”

  “I– I didn’t do anything.” The voice was higher, more feminine and flexible. She didn’t want to think of the magnitude of the theft just performed or her part in it. She resisted the urge to turn around.

  “I’m dead now. I’m dead.” Panic rose despite herself.

  “No, Anki, you are alive. It is only a shell. The woman you replaced is being cared for on her way to Gwynvyd. Soon she will understand. She will be comforted beyond what we can imagine.”

  She wanted to believe him. Anything to keep the feeling of murder at bay. Still, she struggled with it. The smell of loosened bowels made her want to be sick. Sean cracked all four windows.

  He looked over. “We need to drop it off. No disrespect, Anki, but there will be nothing of a burial or anything close to tradition.”

  “I understand.” She did and it seared to her core. The body in the backseat that she’d cared for and lived in all her life would be discarded. The body she was in was now hers, stolen from another. Yes, she understood – nothing would ever resemble normal again.

  She forced herself to open the purse to learn who had lost everything so that they might win.

  • • •

  Father Keefe placed his hands on the coffin and bowed his head.

  “God our creator and redeemer, by your power Christ conquered death and entered into glory. Confident of his victory and claiming his promises, we entrust Phillip to your mercy in the name of Jesus our Lord, who died and is alive and reigns with you, now and forever. Amen.”

  Edward stood as the six-person choir began a hymn, joined by the fifty or so gathered in the medieval church. Old Phillip Shaw’s funeral was both an unavoidable obligation and a timely refuge from which he followed events in Rome. He prayed for the many souls departing or being captured. Segmentation helped stem the bleeding of ranks but the rate of the felling was far worse than he’d imagined possible. There was no sure way yet to know whether Cathbad’s plans had backfired or were in play, or if he’d even had a plan. He prayed for either his safe return or graceful departure before they had use of his core. The thought of it made him shift further. Sad as it was, there was too much danger in staying even vaguely linked.

  The Concord of Ascension would be enacted soon if Cathbad didn’t break free. Leading the Runa Korda in the Conflict would be an honor but only if it were in a state of unity. Padrig and the others might contest his ascension, a grim prospect given the scattering. To have the family warring now would make things impossible.

  The singing ended. Smoke wafted from a copper thurible as Father Keefe censed the coffin, commending Phillip’s soul to rise to God. Edward knew for a fact it already had.

  He bowed his head not to pray but to think. Details of the strike on Johan fit no pattern he’d ever seen. To have overridden him suggested they’d mastered combining. What more they might learn threatened everything.

  Father Keefe finished the commendation and addressed the congregation. He then passed down the aisle with his three acolytes. The singing began again. Atop the coffin, an arrangement of flowers seemed to droop under the weight of an uncertain and troubled future.

  Edward sighed. He should have paid more respect to the funeral, to his friend’s memory, but there wasn’t much choice. Phillip probably understood.

  Twenty minutes later, an attendant filed out after turning down the lights over the altar. Edward sat alone in the church. Rain played against the stained glass windows. Somewhere in the churchyard a set of chimes pealed low and thoughtful in the wind. Inside, stillness pervaded so deep as to slow the heart. The church had always had that effect on him.

  Edward closed his eyes and sought the edges of Gwynvyd. Its warmth and light lay just beyond the barrier that contained all of life in the universe. With all his might he stretched forward into it, only to feel infinity – and in that endlessness, his mortal limits.

  A messenger came then, with a ghostly and quick delivery from the realm of Saoghal. Bràthair had found the transport depot in the Persian Gulf, along the coast of Qatar. They were following a tunnel in search of the base.

  Decisions loomed suddenly, each with its own possible outcome. The trackways were vague, harder to sense. There were so many variables, so many possibilities. Soon he would have to choose.

  Edward opened his eyes and stared at the figure of Jesus hanging on the cross. For an instant it was Austin’s face he saw, suffering in pain.

  Chapter 29

  A man’s subconscious self is not the ideal companion. It lurks for the greater part of his life in some dark den of its own, hidden away, and emerges only to taunt and deride and increase the misery of a miserable hour.

  -P.G. Wodehouse, 1881 – 1975, British Novelist

  A storm front stretched across the Aegean Sea and blew sheets of rain on the patio roof. Lightning flashed and thunder shook the villa’s timbers. Tasia worked on preparing breakfast for Gus while Austin sat on the couch watching the news, a half-eaten bowl of cereal on the coffee table. On screen, the Pope made a special entreaty to all organizations with power – governments, corporations, militaries, terrorist groups, and gangs – to cease hostilities and work on behalf of all people to restore civility and order to the world.

  Tasia clucked and shook her head.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said, stirring scrambled eggs. She nodded at the television. “I’m only thinking how sad.”

  Nothing... right. He suspected the housekeeper knew more than he did. Segmentation was one thing – information blackout was another. Johan hadn’t reached out to him since Maria arrived at Mykonos. Gus would have to give him an update of substance. The truth, in any case.

  A report began that covered the situation in Rome, including the Vatican bomb search. Seeing the brightly colored guards bearing machine guns seemed wrong, like court jesters readying for war. He felt like a fool himself, sitting on his hands not doing a damn thing to stop any of it. Holding back was taking its toll, adding to an already emotional morning.

  Gus arrived for breakfast. He issued greetings to Austin and Tasia as he passed through the kitchen. Austin followed and leaned against the entry to the white-tiled breakfast nook. Gray light fell from a circular skylight in the ceiling. Windows looked out on a row of grape trellises with barren vine leaves fluttering in the wind. He studied the old druid and could tell he hadn’t slept well, if at all.

  “Good morning, Gus. I was–”

  “Before you start, have a seat.” He scooped eggs onto his toast and took a bite. He waited for Austin to sit. “You’re right, I haven’t told you what’s happening and for good reason. The Korda is on the run. Scattering. Necessary when the Comandanti are hunting and hunting they are. They’ve captured Cathbad.”

  “What?”

  “And Johan, too.”

  He anchored himself to the table and tried to absorb the implications. “Maria turned on them?”

  “Possibly, or she was discovered. We have Johan’s body. He’s been severed from it. But Cathbad... they have him.”

  “Where?” Intention and potential swirled.

  Gus held up a fork. “Settle yourself.” He raised both brows in challenge until Austin nodded his understanding. “He was last seen entering Vatican City. No trace of him there now.”

  “They’ll take him to their base. Bastion wants to see his prize. I need to know where it is. You know where it is, don’t you?”

  Gus returned his gaze. “You have a more immediate problem to deal with. Your shift training. It’s time to use it.” He drank his coffee. “Tasia will help you. Go now. You’re taking twice the bràthair to shield until you shift.”

  Austin recalled the thousands of souls fleeing Montevideo
, cast out of life, and all those lost in Istanbul, Johannesburg, and Miami. He thought of the billions of people lured into ignorance and compliance by systems that limited potential and preserved suffering. And now more death, a massive trending tied directly to him. Guilt fired anger again, accompanied by fear. Intention rose. He would kill Bastion, rescue Cathbad, and lay waste to the Comannda’s core.

  Gus shook his head at the rising vibe. “This is not the time for emotional indulgence. Either contain yourself or I’ll have you drugged. It’s hard enough to keep you off the radar as it is. Now focus, damn it. Go work with Tasia. We’ll talk only after you’re done.”

  • • •

  The wind carried a river of hot sand around Johan’s sitting form. Atop a dune, with hood drawn and eyes closed against the endless dry world, he wished for sleep, for a daydream, for any release from the punishment of the sameness surrounding him.

  Instead, nothing changed.

  Not the angle of the sun, the temperature, the degree of his thirst, the shape of the dunes, or the color of the cloudless sky. Nothing moved except the sand and wind, and even those he found ran in patterns. The landscape held no vibe, no echo of character other than his own. He was alone and isolated beyond anything he’d imagined possible, completely locked into a physical experience with no hope of escape.

  No change.

  No chance of sleep.

  No relief.

  It was the exact opposite of what he’d come to know. Imagination lacked, intuition failed, inspiration flat lined. He could no more leave for Saoghal than he could fly from the desert or cool the hot winds. Something had claimed his soul. Doubts formed about it being Bastion and his korjé, combined or not. It was the most complete state he’d ever experienced, unlike any dream or waking state in memory.

  For the hundredth time he attempted to scour the edges of what passed as reality. As before, he found only what five senses could gather. It left him feeling plastic, an accessory for the scene. Purpose waned. Memory of the Conflict stirred him less and less. Time had stopped its march and left him to die.