by B. J. Keeton
Ceril shook his head.
“I see,” Saker said. He sighed and then reached up and combed through his hair with his fingers. “There's no easy way for me to tell you this, Ceril, so do you mind if I'm blunt?”
“No,” said Ceril.
“The Jaronya priest severed your left arm and crushed your right leg. We had to amputate.”
Ceril closed his eyes and didn’t speak. So those waves of dark that he saw, they were…what? His new prosthetics? He lay there in silence.
“We did the only thing we could, Ceril,” Saker continued. “You were dying when you arrived. You had already bled a great deal. To be honest with you, I couldn’t believe you weren’t already dead. Apparently, your sleeve helped keep you from bleeding out entirely; however, it wasn't enough. You had simply lost too much blood for our normal procedures to help. The only thing we could do was perform your Blood Rites.”
“So…I passed?” Ceril asked. “My Rites? We did it?”
“You could say that,” the doctor said. “Your Rites weren't normal, though, Ceril. The test itself, nor your Blood Rites. The severity of your injuries prevented us from performing the typical ritual.”
“What do you mean?” Ceril asked. “What is typical?”
Harlo broke in. “What had you been told about the Blood Rites before, Ceril?”
Ceril's eyes closed, and he drifted to the edge of consciousness.
“Ceril?” Doctor Saker asked.
“Sorry,” he said, “Umm, the Blood Rites are a ceremony, right? Some kind of ritual after you pass the test to become a full agent.”
Harlo nodded. “True. They are. That whole experience on Jaronya, that was the testing part of our Rites. The Blood Rites, though, are a physical change to your body to help you bond to Charonic technology. We're not told this coming in,” she said. Ceril was too far gone to notice the hint of contempt in her voice. “The Rites are painful, Ceril. Even the normal ones. They hurt a lot.”
“What happens?” Ceril asked. “Did I miss mine?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You did. Normally, they perform a ceremony, and then they drain the initiate of blood. At the same time, they transfuse into them specially-tagged nanites to replace anything that is drained.” She let that sink in for a moment and gave Ceril time to respond. When he didn’t, she said, “A Rited Charon’s entire circulatory system is nanite-based, Ceril. And yours is even more so.”
Doctor Saker said, “When we performed your Blood Rites, it was an emergency. The nanites were going to have to do more than serve as your bloodstream. They would have to take over the physical aspects of your body that were missing. Do you understand?”
Ceril shook his head. “Not…really, no.”
“It is going to take conscious effort at all times to maintain your arm and leg’s structure, Ceril. The nanites are bonded to you in a way far different than normal Blood Rites. Until today, we were honestly not sure if you would survive the process. We weren’t sure anyone could. Initial scans indicated that the nanites have clustered in your brainstem, and more recent tests show that they have begun restructuring your brain’s synapse system.”
Ceril blinked. “What?”
“It's nothing to worry about,” Doctor Saker said.
“I…don’t see that,” Ceril said.
“It’s not bad, I promise. Your body is just adapting to a new addition, and I wanted you to be aware of it. It's necessary for the nanites to function like the original organic tissue. I would assume that the restructuring may also be the cause of your blurred vision. That should correct itself within a few hours to a few days, as you use the nanotech, and it becomes more adapted to your physiology.” Saker kept talking, telling Ceril about his new body systems, but Ceril’s attention waned eventually, and he didn't hear anything the doctor was telling him.
Instead, Ceril thought about the fact that he was no longer entirely human. He thought about the dark blurs he had seen a few minutes before, the one that had knocked Saker to the wall and the one after it—the one from which Saker and Harlo had fled in advance. He was feared now. He was something new. Something different.
He looked down and concentrated on being able to see himself. His eyes did not want to focus, but he made them. Ceril was horrified. He was literally half the person he used to be. Gaping craters existed where his left arm and right leg should be. His entire right leg was gone, as though it had never existed. His body just kind of stopped at the hip. His left arm was worse. His chest was now concave, his left shoulder and a portion of his torso gone.
It took a few moments for the truth of what he was seeing to sink in. When it did, Ceril screamed. Tears welled in his eyes, and he tried to move his missing arm and leg. He felt a tingle he hadn't before, and waves of blackness exploded again. This time, luckily, Harlo and Saker were not in the way, and the nanites dissipated harmlessly.
“Where are they?” Ceril asked. He didn’t care who answered.
“Your arm and leg are gone, son,” Doctor Saker said as calmly as he could. “The arm was burned on Jaronya, I believe. Your legs were crushed—shattered, really—but we were able to repair the damage in the left one. The right one was just too…We had to amputate.”
Ceril sat in stunned silence. The doctor continued, “When you're a little stronger and more able to concentrate, you'll be able to control these nanites,” he gestured at the empty spaces on Ceril's body, “to work exactly like your old limbs. As you grow more comfortable with them, you'll be able to include them actively as you Conjure. Most of us can only do it with our blood, but you have pretty much your whole body at your disposal.”
That’s when Ceril started to cry. He hadn't asked for this. He didn't want this.
“Where are we?” Ceril asked when his sobs subsided.
“Erlon,” Harlo told him.
“Where on Erlon? Ennd's?”
Harlo nodded. “We're at Ennd's, yeah, but there’ve been some developments in the time you've been out, Ceril.”
“How long was I out?”
Harlo swallowed, and Doctor Saker said, “You were in a coma for three months.”
Ceril just blinked. Three months of his life, just gone. He hadn’t been dreaming, couldn’t remember a thing. It was like those months never existed because, for him, they hadn’t.
“Which is why,” the doctor continued, “we had no idea if the procedure would take. You were unconscious the whole time, and until just now, we had no indication, other than tests, of how your body was reacting to the technology.”
“But,” Ceril asked, “I’m fine?”
“Time will tell,” Saker said. “You're certainly better off than I anticipated.”
“But you're not out of the woods yet,” Harlo interjected.
Someone knocked rapidly on the door, and Saryn and Chuckie filed into the room. Saker motioned at Ceril, and their faces brightened.
“Nice to see you back in the land of the living, boss,” Chuckie said, a smile on his face.
“Ternia!” Saryn said. “You're okay!”
“Hi, guys,” Ceril said.
Doctor Saker took the opportunity to excuse himself. He shuffled some things around in his pockets before he left, and said, “I'll give you all some time to talk. Ceril, I'll be back later this evening to check on you. If you need anything at all, don't hesitate to call me.”
Ceril nodded at him as he left the room. “Yeah,” he said. “Will do.”
Saryn said, “Are you—”
Ceril nodded. “I'm fine,” he said and managed a pitiful smile.
Chuckie said, “You don't look like it, boss. You look like you've been through some kind of hell.”
Ceril chuckled a little and closed his eyes. “From…what I'm told, I just might have been.”
Chuckie smirked.
Saryn just stood there and looked at Ceril. She smiled awkwardly at him, unsure of what else to say now that he was finally awake, and then she turned her attention to Harlo. “There's some new inform
ation in Squalt's murder.”
Ceril tried to sit up, but found that even a simple task like sitting up was harder than he thought it would be. Of course, he didn’t want to slam his nanite arm and leg into his team, so he made a conscious effort not to instinctively flex his amputated limbs. He couldn’t manage everything at once, so when his vision blurred, he just lay back where he was and said, “Squalt's murder?”
Everyone exchanged glances. Ceril could tell that they were uncomfortable. Saryn spoke first. She said, “When we came back to Ennd's from Jaronya, it was through Squalt's office. That was the only connection we were able to make.”
“Harlo told me. Lucky break,” Ceril said.
“When we got there, though,” she choked up for a second, “we found two bodies. One of them was Headmaster Squalt. I recognized his, umm, face. The other we were able to identify later as Nary Thralls, a new culinary arts professor here.”
“Bodies?” Ceril asked.
“Mutilated. It was brutal, Ternia”
“Who did it?”
“That's the thing,” Saryn said. “There was an intruder a few months back who did a lot of damage to the school, but they were unable to identify him. He said he was Swarley Dann's uncle. Records show that Dann didn’t actually have an uncle, but the receptionist didn't run a check when the visitor came in and just took his word for it. Because she didn’t, Dann and another student are dead.”
“Wait, what?” Ceril felt his amputated limbs begin to tingle. “Swarley’s dead?”
Saryn sighed. “Yes, Ceril. I’m sorry.”
Blackness exploded again, this time into the air. A fountain of nanites erupted, and Ceril’s friends backed quickly away from the bed. When he had once again regained control of himself, Ceril asked, “Who was the man?”
“They're not sure. Somehow, all video feeds of where he went through the school were scrambled. It’s like he was emitting his own low-level EM field.”
“That’s odd,” Ceril said. “Who does that?” Do I do that now? Now that I’m a machine?
“Yeah, it is. That’s what I was talking about there being a break in the murder. Turns out, there was a feed from Squalt's office that picks up some time after Thralls was murdered. I have it on my tablet, but so far no one on the team has been able to identify him. I was on my way to take it to Roman and the others aboard the Sigil when I stopped by here.
“So the Sigil's connected again?” Ceril asked.
“For the time being,” Harlo chimed in. “Some kind of quick-fix, but Roman doesn’t think it’ll hold. Anyway, Jaronya was how they were testing us to make sure we could handle the Blood Rites and deserved to be Charons.”
“And Swinton?” Ceril asked, pain in his voice.
“According to Roman, there are often more deaths than that. He says that our team was lucky.”
Ceril's looked down at himself. “We were lucky?”
“I know,” Harlo said. “It's hard to believe.”
“Yeah,” Ceril said. “Can we see the feed, Saryn?”
“Sure, I guess,” she said. She rummaged through her pack and pulled out her tablet. She swiped at it a few times and tapped a few more, and eventually the screen lit up with a monochrome video of Squalt's office.
After a few minutes of watching, Ceril began to sob.
“Ceril,” Harlo said. “Are you okay? What is it?”
Ceril just kept weeping.
“He's had a hard day,” Harlo said. “We should probably go.”
“No,” Ceril said. “Don't.” He paused, sobbed a couple more times, and took a deep breath before continuing. “Can you run the video back, Saryn? Maybe pause it on a good shot of the killer's face?”
“I think so,” she said. She tapped the screen a few times and held the tablet in front of Ceril's face. “Is that clear enough?”
Ceril nodded, and he began to sob again.
Chuckie asked quietly, “You know who that is, don't you, boss?”
Ceril said nothing. Eventually, he swallowed hard and coughed. He took a deep breath. “It’s my grandfather,” he said. “Gramps killed those people.”
“I don’t think I heard you right, boss.”
“That man. In the video,” Ceril said. “He’s my grandfather.”
“I think I’m missing something here, boss.”
“I don’t know a lot. Roman told me before we left that Gramps used to be a Charon. His name is Damien Vennar—”
“Vennar?” Saryn asked. “Like—”
“Yeah,” Ceril said. “He’s that Vennar. The hero, the myth, the technomage they wrote stories about thousands of years ago…”
“Wasn’t Vennar like a good guy, though?” Chuckie asked. “No offense to your grand-daddy, but that video don’t show a real nice guy.”
Ceril used his good arm to wipe his eyes before the tears could roll down his cheeks. “He was. In the stories, he was. Is. I don’t know what’s going on in the video. Roman said that Gramps somehow sabotaged the Sigil a long time ago, that he did it to get back at the other technomages somehow.”
“That old guy looks familiar, though,” Chuckie said. “I’ve seen him somewhere before, I think.”
“Where?” Harlo asked. “I was thinking the same thing, but I can’t place it.”
“I don’t mean to change the subject,” Ceril asked, “but have you guys heard anything else about the Untouchable?”
“Only what the Gatekeeper said,” Saryn told him.
“That’s it!” Chuckie said. “Your granddaddy looks like the Gatekeeper in the temple! That’s where I’ve seen him before!”
“Now that you mention it,” Saryn said, “he kind of does. How odd.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Harlo. “I could see it.”
“Who’s the Gatekeeper?” Ceril asked. “Why does he look like Gramps?”
“He’s a hologram like the Archive,” Saryn replied. “He controlled the Instance portal in the temple. And, to answer your other question, he actually did mention the Untouchable.”
Ceril raised his head off the pillow a bit and cocked an eyebrow up. “He did?”
“He said the Untouchable’s last known location was,” she paused and looked at the tablet, “in Ternia. It was a long time ago, I know, but…Ceril, I don’t mean to be…”
“It’s okay, Saryn.”
“Could your grandfather be the Untouchable?”
“No,” Ceril said quickly. Then he thought about the video he had seen and said, “Maybe. I hope not. I don’t know. I��” His voice trailed off.
Ceril closed his eyes and clenched his teeth. He dropped back onto his pillow and began to gather himself. He felt betrayed and angry, sad, disappointed, and more than a little sickened by his grandfather. He focused on how he felt about the old man. In seconds, he was no longer an amputee, as shimmering black replicas of his missing limbs materialized.
“Ceril,” Harlo said. “You need to be careful. I don’t think you’re ready for that kind of—”
“I think I can manage,” Ceril said. He wiggled his toes, bent his knee, and pushed himself up off the pillow. Then the limbs disappeared as he lost concentration, and he collapsed again.
“See?” Harlo said.
“I’m fine,” Ceril countered. But he wasn’t. He was getting dizzy and the edges of his vision were fading to black. He spoke faster as he fought unconsciousness. “I promise. Saryn, I need any reports on Untouchable attacks since Squalt was killed. I have a hunch that those attacks really picked up, and I need to see a pattern to make sure. If the Gatekeeper said there was something in Ternia, then that’s where we need to be. Part of our job was finding a connection to the Untouchable, and if you’re right, and Gramps is the Untouchable, then I’m the best connection to the Untouchable we’ve got.”
“You can’t put yourself through this,” Harlo said. “Saryn, talk some sense into him.”
“She’s right, Ternia. This isn’t your fight right now. Maybe it was. Maybe it will be, but right now, you h
ave more to worry about.”
“No,” Ceril said. “He killed Swarley, Saryn. He was the only friend I had before I went aboard the Sigil. I don’t know what’s going on, but I have to find out. I want to know—I need to know—why the man who raised me lied to me every day of my life.”
“You don’t know that,” Saryn said. “You don’t know that’s your Gramps on that video. You just need to calm down for a while and get better.”
The blackness was filling his vision more rapidly now. “Even if he’s not the Untouchable, he’s at least Vennar. He still lied to me. Maybe he’s not a killer or a terrorist. Maybe he’s just a ten-thousand-year-old Charon,” Ceril said and laughed, but even it was weak, and he had to force himself to continue. “Either way, he is something that isn’t my technophobic Gramps. And, right now, I don’t even know who I am anymore, much less who he is.” He flexed his left arm, and the nanites congealed into a fist, then dissipated again. “I just have to find that out, okay?”
“Okay,” the three of them said at the same time.
“Thank you,” he said. With that, Ceril lay his head down and closed his eyes. He fell asleep instantly.
When he woke up the next day, the world had changed.
Epilogue
Damien Vennar remembered when Ferran had not been so…ruined. He wondered if anyone had even bothered to repair any of the sandstone buildings in the past five hundred years. The streets were dusty and badly damaged, their cracked stones preventing anything but foot travel.
The twin suns beat down on Ferran worse than anywhere else Damien had ever been. He had been spoiled by so many years in Ternia. This kind of heat was going to take some getting used to. The streets were packed with people, and no one seemed to care who they bumped into as they rushed about. Merchants had tents lining both sides of the streets, and Damien picked a tent, seemingly at random. He weaved through the throng of pedestrians and stood in front of what appeared to be a jewelry vendor.
“Hello there,” Damien said.
“Oh, hi!” The merchant replied. His voice was higher-pitched than Damien would have expected for such a burly man. “What can I do for you today? I know! You’re looking for the perfect stone for a perfect lady! Try this!” He reached for a braided necklace with a large, orange stone as a pendant. “Perfect, no?”