Circle Series 4-in-1

by Ted Dekker

  Martyn swung around, marched out of the lake, tossed his sword to one side, and pulled his hood back over his head. He walked past Qurong toward the Horde army.

  Justin’s body stopped jerking.

  His skin was cracked and white, unrecognizable as human flesh. But it was the blood that Thomas stared at. Blood spilled for cleansing was permitted. When he’d returned from the desert nearly a Scab himself, he’d been permitted to bathe, even though he was bleeding from several of the cracks in his skin.

  But this . . .

  Did Ciphus realize that this might be different?

  The soldiers reached down and cut the cord. Justin’s body slipped into the water with a small splash and sank with the weight of the two large stones strapped to his wrists.

  Bubbles rose to the surface. They watched in silence as the water slowly became glassy once again. It was finished. The lake had swallowed the brutality whole, leaving no sign except for a slick of spilled blood.

  Thomas looked back at Ciphus. The elder’s face was white, fixated on the water.

  29

  MIKE OREAR adjusted his collar mike and glanced into the camera. He’d never imagined becoming the voice of the Raison Strain, but his gall in breaking the story had somehow caught a wave of appreciation with the viewers. CNN’s ratings had shot past Fox News’s for the first time in years. The brass extended his airtime to six hours a day, three in the morning, three in the evening. It was the assignment of a lifetime, he knew.

  A very short lifetime.

  Now, with the news widely known, and after an endless parade of guests—geneticists and virologists and psychologists and the like—the threat he’d made known had come to haunt him in a very, very real way. Before, he had been as consumed with breaking the story as with what the virus meant to him personally. Now, along with the rest of America, he couldn’t shake the dread knowledge that he was about to die.

  That knowledge changed everything. He wanted to be home with his mother and father. He wanted to go to church. He wanted to be married and have children. He wanted to cry.

  Instead, he decided to serve humanity in what way he could, which meant bringing knowledge and comfort and perhaps, just perhaps, aiding the incredible effort underway to beat this virus.

  The news of the arms shipments hadn’t hit the fan yet. A plea from the Pentagon and the president himself had delayed the announcement for the time being. Their argument was simple and cogent: Let the public adjust to the news of the virus for a few days, then let the president tell them the rest of the story. It had been three days. The president was scheduled to give two major addresses today: the first to the United Nations in New York and the second to the nation at six Eastern tonight. The latter address would tell America the whole story.

  A clip of Nancy’s interview with a social psychologist from UCLA was on its last leg. Mike scanned his notes. The source who’d given him this information on Thomas Hunter was impeccable. The story itself was beyond belief. He’d decided to hold off on the dreams, but the story hardly needed that much detail. America deserved to know about Thomas Hunter.

  He looked into the camera, its red light on him. “Wise words of caution,” he said in reference to Dr. Beyer’s commentary on panic. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’ve recently come across some information that I think you’ll find fascinating. I realize that under the circumstances, ‘fascination’ seems like a pretentious word, but we’re still people and we still cling to hope, wherever we can find it, however it comes. And frankly, we may owe our hope to the man I’m about to show you. His name is Thomas Hunter.”

  A head shot of Hunter’s stern if somewhat boyish face filled the screen for a moment—a driver’s license photo from Colorado. Dark hair, strong jaw. The image slipped to the upper corner of Mike’s monitor.

  “‘Classified’ is another word that sounds a bit pretentious now, but there are details about Thomas Hunter that we can’t divulge without first confirming. What we can say is that it has come to our attention that this man was single-handedly responsible for calling out the threat this nation faces while facing a sea of doubters. Indeed, if the world had listened to Mr. Hunter a week earlier than they did, we might have avoided the virus altogether. I’m sure some of you remember a story we ran two weeks ago about Hunter’s kidnapping of Monique de Raison in Bangkok. It now appears that he did so in an attempt to stop the vaccine from being released.”

  This was where the story got a bit fuzzy. The whys and hows—and the bit about the dreams—were enough to cast suspicion on the entire story.

  “We have reason to believe that many in our government consider this man critical to our ability to defeat this threat. We also have reason to believe that his life may be in danger. I promise you, we’ll stay on top of this story and bring you details as soon as we have them.”

  He turned to Nancy, whom he’d insisted remain as his coanchor.

  “Nancy.”

  Kara Hunter left the taxi at a run and hurried up the concrete stairs to the white building in the middle of a pastoral setting outside of Baltimore, Maryland. The huge blue letters mounted overhead read “Genetrix Laboratories,” but she knew that only a year ago the sign had read “Raison Pharmaceutical.” The French company had sold it off when they’d centralized their operations in Bangkok.

  Monique de Raison was in this building, working feverishly on a solution to her own mutated virus.

  Thomas was dead.

  Kara had spent the first day in complete denial. Mother had slipped into one of her terrible brooding moods. Then the news of the Raison Strain hit the airwaves and everything changed. Kara went from complete unwillingness to accept Thomas’s death to the sinking realization that they were all dead anyway.

  The city of New York, like all cities, had first swallowed the story in jaded silence. It took twenty-four hours for the news to sink in. The streets hadn’t emptied right away, but by the end of the second day, finding a taxi would have been a chore. Wall Street was still up and running— they were saying that some semblance of life had to go on. The talking heads—the mayor, the governor, the president— all said the same thing. America had to keep functioning. Electricity, water, stocks and bonds. Food, gasoline, cars, and planes. Hospitals. If they shut down, the country would shut down. Panic would kill America as surely as any virus. Every lab in the world was frantically searching for a cure—one would be found.

  But Kara knew better.

  Today, Kara had developed a fresh case of denial. The news that Thomas might be some kind of hero had been picked up by every channel she surfed. They had dug up his driver’s license photo, of all things. There was his young face, trying so hard to be sincere. The picture brought tears to her eyes. She missed him enough that the threat of the Raison Strain felt strangely feeble.

  What if he was alive? They hadn’t actually found his body, had they? Gains had been tight-lipped. He’d told her that Monique had seen him dead. But how long after his death had she seen him? Yes, the lake’s power was gone over there. Yes, he’d been persuaded that this time his death would be final. Yes, it had been two days and not a word from him. Yes, yes, yes!

  But this was her only brother here. She wasn’t going to let him be dead, not yet.

  She’d left Mother this morning, tracked down Monique through one of the deputy secretary’s aides, received permission to visit her, and flown straight to Baltimore.

  Kara pushed through the door. A haggard receptionist lifted her head. “Can I help you?”

  “Yes, my name is Kara Hunter. Monique de Raison is expecting me.”

  “Yes, Ms. Hunter. This way, please.”

  The woman led her down a long hall and into a large laboratory. At least twenty work stations were each manned by technicians. To Kara’s left, a long glass wall looked into a clean room where blue-capped, white-jacketed, masked technicians worked. Voices buzzed quietly. Intently. These were the people bent on cracking a code that couldn’t be cracked in the time given. These we
re America’s heroes, she thought. They paid her no mind as she walked through the lab into another hall and then entered a large office where Monique bent over a thick ream of photos with a scientist who vaguely resembled Einstein, bushy hair, spectacles, and all.

  Monique looked up.

  “Kara.” Her face seemed to sag and her eyes were red. She looked at her comrade. “Excusez-moi un moment, Charles.”

  The man nodded and left.

  Monique stepped to Kara and pulled her into a fierce hug. “I’m so sorry, Kara.” She sniffed. “I’m so very sorry.”

  Kara hadn’t expected such a touching reception. What had happened between Monique and Thomas? She swallowed a lump rising in her throat. “Are you okay?”

  Monique pulled back and turned her face. “Not really, no. I’m not sure that I can deliver.”

  “They say that your encoding survived the mutation.”

  “It’s not that simple. But yes, the genes I had isolated for modification with the introduction of my own virus did survive. We will know in a couple hours what that means.”

  “You don’t sound hopeful.”

  “I don’t know how to sound.” She looked at Kara with sad eyes.

  “I came because I’m having difficulty accepting his death,” she said.

  Monique’s eyes watered. She bit her lower lip and eased into her chair behind the desk.

  “What happened out there, Monique?”

  “I dreamed,” she said.

  She’d dreamed. This was supposed to mean something? And then it suddenly did.

  “You . . . like Thomas, you mean? You dreamed of the forest?”

  “Yes. Only not as myself, but as his wife, Rachelle. And honestly, it felt to me like that was the real world and this one was only the dream.”

  Kara couldn’t contain her surprise. “You went there? You saw him there? How?”

  “We were sleeping, and I think it might have been something to do with the fact that we were in contact. Our wrists had been injured, both of ours. Maybe our blood . . . I don’t know. But I do know that I shared Rachelle’s life. I shared all her memories, her experiences.”

  “You have no doubt about this?” Kara asked, gaping.

  “None. And we were both afraid that if he was killed in either reality, he would also die in the other. And also that even if he was by some miracle cured in that reality, he might not be cured in this reality.”

  “I won’t accept that!” Kara said. Even though the same thoughts had occurred to her, she had been hoping Monique would contradict her ideas.

  Monique blinked at her outburst.

  “Sorry. But if you’d been through what I’ve been through these past weeks . . .” Kara dropped into a facing chair. “But then you have, haven’t you? Then let me be straight with you. I’m not willing to accept this nonsense that he’s dead.”

  “I saw him!”

  “You saw him? Did you feel his pulse?”

  “I watched Carlos feel his pulse. He was dead.” Her voice was strained.

  Kara considered something Thomas had told her before leaving on his rescue. He’d concluded that he was the only gateway between the two realities. If he was dead . . .

  “You do realize that if your antivirus fails, then the only hope this world has is Thomas.”

  “Yes.”

  “And if he’s dead, we may be in a world of hurt.”

  “He got me out; I have the antivirus.”

  “I thought you weren’t so sure.”

  “We’re working on it.”

  “And I’m working on Thomas.”

  “They’ve already dropped a team into the region where I was held,” Monique said. She sounded as if she might snap.

  “Okay, fine. Let’s think this through. We both know that Carlos isn’t sloppy enough to let them find him. This isn’t about the tactics of special forces. This is about the mind and the heart, and I think you and I might be the ones to find Thomas’s mind and heart. If he’s alive.”

  “And if he’s not?”

  “As I said, I’m not willing to accept that.”

  Monique stared at Kara. A glimmer of hope lit her eyes. “Do you realize that if Rachelle is killed, I may die?” she asked.

  “Tell me everything that happened,” Kara said. “Everything.”

  30

  THE HORDE guarded the lake that night. The custom of the Desert Dwellers required that the executed remain a night in the water to complete his humiliation. No one was allowed to enter or bathe until the body was removed.

  Ciphus objected but finally capitulated, as much to control the lingering of those loyal to Justin as to yield to the Horde’s demands. The beach was cleared, and those who celebrated Justin’s death did so in the streets rather than by the lake. Those few who could not wait until morning to bathe did so with the small reserves held in some of the houses.

  Thomas found Rachelle in their home, lying on the floor, exhausted and unmoving. Neither had slept for nearly two days. He made her wash and then did so himself. They fell into bed without talking about the execution and fell into a dead sleep.

  Oddly, Thomas did not dream of the Raison Strain that night. He hadn’t eaten the rhambutan fruit, so he did dream, just not of the virus and France. He should have, though. Unless, of course, he wasn’t alive in the other reality any longer, in which case there would be nothing for him to dream about.

  But that would mean he was powerless to stop the Raison Strain. Hopefully Monique could stop it. If not, she would die along with the rest of the world in about ten days or so. And Rachelle might very well die with her.

  These were the dreamy thoughts running through Thomas’s mind when he heard the screams that pulled him from deep sleep early the next morning.

  He jerked upright and immediately gasped at a sharp pain that shot through his skin. A quick glance confirmed the worst. The disease was upon him. Not just a light graying, but a nearly fully advanced condition!

  He bent his arm, but the pain stopped him. The gray flaking on the epidermis didn’t begin to characterize the horrible agony. How had this happened? He had to get to the lake!

  Again he bent his arm, this time ignoring the pain, as he knew the Desert Dwellers did. It felt as though the layer of skin just under the epidermis had turned brittle and was cracking when he moved.

  Rachelle sat up. “What’s that?”

  The screams were coming from the west. The lake.

  “What . . .” Rachelle cried out with pain and stared at her skin. “Didn’t we bathe last night?”

  Thomas peeled off his covers and forced himself to stand through the pain. His mind swam with confusion. Maybe they’d accidentally used rainwater instead of water from the lake. It had happened before.

  Rachelle had risen and rushed to the window, wincing with each step. “It’s the lake. Something’s wrong with the lake!”

  “Papa!” Marie ran into the room. She too! The disease covered her skin like white ash.

  “Get your brother! Hurry!”

  “It hurts—”

  “Hurry!”

  They didn’t bother with slippers or boots, only tunics. Thomas and Rachelle led their two children from the house, urging them to move as quickly as possible, which resulted in tears and a pace barely faster than a walk. The screaming had spread; hundreds, thousands of villagers had awakened to the same condition. The disease had swept in over night and infected them all, Thomas thought. They streamed down the main street, desperate for the lake.

  Thomas grabbed Samuel’s hand and pulled him along. “Ignore it. The faster you get to the water, the sooner the pain will be gone.”

  “Why is this happening?” Rachelle panted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s everyone! Maybe it’s punishment for the death of Justin.”

  “I hope only that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know, Rachelle!” he snapped.

  She hurried beside him in silence. Mar
ie and Samuel were both crying through their pain, but they too knew enough to push ahead. Elyon’s lake was their salvation; they knew that like they knew they needed air to breathe. Every cell in their bodies screamed for the relief that the lake alone could give them.

  The sight that greeted them on the lakeshore stopped Thomas short. Five thousand, maybe ten thousand diseased men, women, and children stood back from the water’s edge, staring aghast or swaying back and forth, moaning.

  The water was red!

  Not just tinged with red, but red like blood.

  Hundreds of brave souls had stepped into the lake and were frantically splashing the red water on their legs and thighs, but most were too terrified to even walk up to the water.

  The screams weren’t from the pain that would normally be associated with cleansing in such a diseased state, Thomas realized. There was terror in their voices and there were many words, but the ones that seized his mind were those that rose above the others in this sea of chaos.

  “The power is gone!”

  A man Thomas barely recognized as William, his own lieutenant, staggered from the water. His skin was wet but the disease clung to him like cracked, mildewed leather.

  William gripped his head with both hands and looked around in desperation. He saw Thomas and lurched up the shore. “It doesn’t work!” He had the look of a crazed man. “The power is gone! The Horde is coming, Thomas!”

  Thomas glanced down the shore to his left. Martyn and Qurong stood with arms folded two hundred yards distant. Behind them, the thousand Scab warriors who’d accompanied them watched in silence.

  “You mean these?”

  William paced frantically, lost to Thomas’s question.

  “William! What do you mean they’re coming?”

  “The scouts have come in. Both armies are in the forest.”

  Both?

  “How many? How far?”

  “He was innocent! Now we will die for allowing it.”

  More people were running onto the shores. Even more were fleeing the lake in panic. William was hardly lucid. Thomas grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him.