Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1)

by Adams, Nicholas

  “The medical community considered us the leading transplant surgeons of Olympus,” the Angel claiming to be Matthew said, sitting taller on his stool, “specializing in epidermal transplants. For that reason alone, I performed the full tissue replacement procedure on Silas Graham, giving my friend the best possible chances of recovery after his disfiguration from the recent Dissident attack at the clinic.”

  The Angel claiming to be Elizabeth cleared her throat. “Weeks after the explosion, we first encountered the disease that would change the course of our lives,” she said, holding an open hand out toward Evangeline, including her in their narrative. “We had been treating a patient from the LTZ who complained of constant redness and itching on her legs. The local doctors could not figure out the cause of the condition, so they referred her to our clinic for a second diagnosis.”

  “The intake nurse interviewed her for her medical and recent travel history,” the male Angel added, “and the only thing out of the ordinary in her report was a hiking trip she had taken three months prior in the distant mountains outside the LTZ borders. She said the redness had spread across her leg, but it had not start itching until the past several days. The LTZ doctors had thought it was an allergic reaction, had given her a prescription, and sent her home. But when the redness continued, she returned to the doctor and let him know how it had gotten worse. With no other options at his disposal, he sent her up to Olympus, to our clinic, for another opinion.”

  “Your father could not identify the specific dermatitis plaguing her,” the female Angel recalled, “but he gave her a prescription for a stronger medication. He had a nagging hunch that she had happened upon some obscure irritant in the area where she had been hiking.”

  The male Angel nodded along with female’s recollection of the events. “She seemed reluctant to admit how far she had ventured into the restricted zone, but I assured her that I only cared about finding the cause and a cure. After disclosing to me the specific directions to find where she had been hiking, we sent her home to rest.”

  Evangeline’s mind reflected on how her parents had always been curious researchers, when the male Angel interrupted her thoughts. “The mysterious skin problem intrigued us, and we decided to investigate ourselves and take samples of the area in the hopes of determining what was causing the illness, which eventually would lead us to a source of treatment.”

  The female Angel spoke up with a tender voice. “You had a sleepover planned at a friend’s house for the following weekend, so we decided it would be an opportune time to go on a research trip outside the LTZ.”

  The male Angel turned to face his companion. “We decided to borrow a specially equipped vehicle from the clinic, stocked with all the supplies we would need for taking samples and running preliminary tests. It took us several hours to travel to area described by the hiker. We set up camp and began investigating the area. After three hours into our exploration, we discovered an old metal container bearing an unfamiliar logo, and lettering that your mother did not recognize. It wasn’t large, perhaps about six inches tall and three inches in diameter. The container had suffered some corrosion and damage, but otherwise appeared intact.”

  “We noticed a curious number of discarded snakeskins to the hiking area,” the female added, placing her hand on the male’s arm. The gesture flooded Evangeline’s mind with long-forgotten memories of her parents. “At first we guessed we had stumbled upon some kind of snakeskin burial ground. We had also observed that all the shrubs and trees within a twenty-foot radius had neither bark nor leaves. Being less familiar with botany than biology, we thought the trees had been through a fire or bleached by the sun over many years.”

  The male nodded his head. “We sealed the container in a sterile bag and continued to take samples, cataloging our findings until the sun dipped below the horizon. We returned to camp for the evening. I don’t know if you recall talking to us that night from your friend’s house.”

  Evangeline gave a quick shake to her head. She did recall speaking with her parents from her friend’s bedroom display, but for reasons unknown to herself, she was unwilling to admit the recollection to the two Angelic strangers seated in front of her.

  The female continued, her eyes heavy with disappointment. “We spent the following day taking samples in another area nearby, but found nothing as interesting as the container. On the third day, we returned to Olympus, laden with samples to analyze in-depth at the clinic.”

  The male Angel’s eyes beamed with vibrant excitement. “We had not experienced that kind of thrill in years. To be hunting a mysterious contaminant and doing genuine research? We felt young again as we dove headlong into unearthing the mystery at the root of our patient’s discomfort.”

  Jack, listening to the Angels’ account, became enrapt in the details of their story. He, more than Evangeline, allowed himself to suspend his disbelief and wanted to believe their story was true. However, a small voice in his head reminded him that he had to remain objective for Evangeline.

  As if seeing Jack’s attention flutter, the male Angel refocused his narrative toward Evangeline with greater sincerity. “The lab technicians began immediately examining the various samples we had collected, while I made my own personal errand to show the container to Silas. I hoped his shrewd investigative skills could identify the source of the container and explain how it had found its way to the middle of the desert. Silas happily obliged - he attributed his full recovery to me and my team. He said that helping explain the origin of the container was the least he could do.”

  “Graham began his investigation by researching the markings on the container in the historical archives. After several days of dead-ends, he discovered that the container had been part of a shipment of experimental medicines that had been sent off world to an undisclosed laboratory for further testing and research. There was no further record of what kinds of medicines were in the shipment or where this testing facility was located. Silas concluded his investigation, but my curiosity was piqued.”

  The female Angel shifted to the edge of her seat. “Your father assumed that containers used for medicinal research experiments would have to be shipped following stringent regulations. He found transport logs and combed through thousands of manifests, examining the freight records of each conceivable ship that could have been capable of handling such precious cargo.”

  “After weeks of scattered hours of research, he found records of a small freighter that had taken undisclosed cargo into an unexplored area of deep space. The description of the containers matched the one we had found in the desert terrain. He was sure that he had found the ship he had been hunting for.”

  The male spoke up again. “I started making inquiries into the shipping company, but no one could deliver the information I wanted. I submitted requests for documentation with the Interstellar Shipping Authority as well as the military, but no one seemed to care about helping me identify the catalyst of this new contagion, which was causing so much discomfort for a single person in the LTZ.

  “Undiscouraged, I continued searching any records he could find that related to that specific area of space. I came across an old note in a captain’s journal describing the location of an abandoned mining facility on a small moon of that quadrant. With the new information I contacted the mining guilds, the ISA, and even the military again, petitioning them to launch an investigation based on the obscure notation from a freighter captain made two centuries before.

  “No one I reached out to would concern themselves with my petitions. I knew there was only one option left, and that was to venture to the mining facility myself and find out the truth behind the mysterious containers.”

  The female Angel spoke next. “He asked me to go with him, but I had given up finding the true source of the dermatitis as a lost cause. The woman was stable with treatment, and I didn’t share your father’s fire for trekking across the quadrants on partial evidence. And then, there was you to consider,” she said, again reaching
out an imploring hand in Evangeline’s direction. “How could we both leave you behind for such a journey? No, I had put the issue of the mysterious illness to rest. My quest was over.

  “Your father, however, was not able to accept unanswered questions. He chartered a freighter to take him to the general area noted on the old captain’s logs and left to go off-world. Once he arrived in the area it did not take long to find the old mining operation, but what he found was not what he expected.”

  The male Angel took a deep, exhausted breathe. “I found the mining operation still inhabited and functioning. And, I found a group of people who I thought was responsible for the explosion at our clinic. I thought I found the Dissident’s.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  After twenty-four hours of being stuffed into a small storage room, with only wire shelves for furniture, Matthew and the four members of the freighter crew were pulled out, one by one, and taken away down the dark corridor with an environmental suit’s helmet facing backward on his head. Matthew had been the last one to be removed from the closet.

  When the metal door opened to the same, large man with the name SWAN embroidered on his shirt, Matthew knew it was his turn. The man held up the dirty helmet he had placed on every other head that left before him with the same speech he delivered four other times. “It’s your turn, Olympian,” he said with distrust and his eyes glaring with hatred.

  Behind Swan outside the door stood three other men, armed with heavy pick-axes and laser-drills. Matthew climbed off the wire shelf-turned-bunk bed and stood on his feet. “Where are you taking me? Where are the others?” he asked with as much boldness as he could muster. Matthew was no coward, but he also did not want to provoke his captors into an act of violence.

  The man holding the helmet looked down at the floor and shook his head. “Like I told that captain,” he let out a menacing chuckle, “you can either put this on and answer our questions down the hall, or you can answer them from outside the airlock where we found you. What’s your choice?”

  Matthew - musing on the old phrase rattling around in his mind - wondered if the imposing man in front of him was the rock or the hard place. With a sigh, he took the helmet from the man’s hand and placed it backward on his head. The tightening knob pinched against the bridge of his nose, threatening to break his glasses. “May I at least have your name?” he asked into the neck shroud.

  “Can’t you read?” the man chuckled. “The name’s on my shirt.”

  Matthew felt Swan’s strong grip clamp down around his upper arm like a vice. Fighting the urge to wince at the pain, he turned his focus on discovering more information. “Are you the Dissidents? Are you the group responsible for bombing my clinic?”

  A chorus of laugher erupted outside the storage room door. The vice grip pushed Matthew toward the ruckus, and he could sense the change in light levels from the open slit at the bottom of the shroud. The surrounding noise told him he had exited his jail cell into a corridor. He had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered before waking up in the storage closet was being knocked unconscious as he stepped through the inner airlock door.

  The laughter followed him down the corridor. The sheer jovial nature of the laughter seemed out of place with the foreboding glances he had received moments before. “What’s so funny?” he asked.

  “You are,” Swan’s voice said next to him. Matthew felt his direction change with a sharp turn to the right and an immediate shove forward through another doorway. Passing the threshold, he heard the mumbled chatter of dozens of voices. He could make out men, women, and children. Phrases like shove his Olympic hide out the airlock, this one’s different, where will we go, and they’ll kill us all pierced through the cacophony of sounds.

  Matthew felt his shins collide with a sharp, metal edge. He peeked through the slit and saw a metal armchair at his feet with straps attached to the arms and legs. His mind flew to his wife and daughter, fearing he would never see them again. Panicking, Matthew tried to spin away from the chair and bolt for the door. Swiping the helmet away from his head, he opened his eyes to find Swan standing in front of him. Shock and disbelief flooded Matthew’s mind, causing him to stumble backward into the metal chair.

  “You kept your cool a lot longer than we expected,” Swan chuckled. “Most people who happen to get caught here end up running for the door as soon as they step out of that closet.”

  Matthew shifted nervously in the cold chair. “I assume you’re going to torture me for information, and then kill me, right? Where are Captain Banks and his crew?” Matthew pulled his eyes from Swan’s gaze to search through the crowd. On the far side of the room, he spotted them against the far wall. Each one had a bodyguard on either side holding a weapon pointed at their chest.

  Swan pulled another metal chair from the closest line of gatherers and sat down in front of Matthew. The large man stared at him for more than a minute before taking in a deep, slow breath. “I’m only going to say this once, so you’d do well to pay attention. There are no Dissidents.”

  Swan spent the next hour explaining to Matthew who they were: Segregants, as he called it. A simple group of people who wanted to live so far outside of Olympic control, that even the LTZ was too close for their comfort. They had become weary of the interference of the Quorum and Olympus in their lives, so they packed up and set out for the furthest point in known space they could find. Finding a centuries-old mining facility abandoned by Olympus was a happy coincidence. The Segregants had spent the past decade mining for precious ores they traded with the less reputable fragments of society, only because they shared an equal disdain for Olympic authority.

  Over the following hour, Matthew explained how he was on a research trip to discover the origin of the mystery container. Swan had the freighter’s shuttle searched before he believed Matthew’s account.

  “Okay, Doc,” Swan said with a lingering strain of distrust, “I’ll accept your story as true… for now.”

  Matthew looked over at Captain Banks and the rest of the crew and saw their countenances brighten as their guards put away their weapons. The guards dissipated into the gathered crowd and joined women and children, whom Matthew assumed to be their families.

  The freighter crew huddled together into a small scrum, still not trusting their safety to the strangers around them.

  Swan also spent a considerable amount of time expounding on the Segregants’ views regarding the Angels. They did not believe the story of a benevolent race from the stars that miraculously came to Earth seeking only the opportunity to serve their Terrain cousins. They believed that the Angels could not be trusted, refusing to incorporate them into their districts.

  Swan’s face turned red with anger as he shared the details of Olympic TRTV patrols forcing their way into his grandfather’s home and threatening his family with prison if they did not obey the law and welcome Angel laborers in his textile mill. “Anyone who smiles all the time cannot be trusted,” he seethed. “My grandmother taught me that the Devil himself must have a gleaming smile, otherwise fewer people would fall for his lies.”

  Matthew’s shock radiated from his face. In all his years, he had never come across more blind prejudice against the Angels than he had witnessed in the past few minutes.

  “The Angels have been nothing but kind and gentle in all my dealings with them,” he said. “In the centuries they’ve been on Earth, they have never once shown the slightest inclination for deceit. I just don’t understand your point of view. Human or Angel, every man, woman and child on Olympus and the LTZ is entitled to the same human rights as you or I.”

  Swan’s face erupted with a sneer. “But, they’re not Human, Doc,” he said with a smooth growl, “so they have no rights as far as I’m concerned. If they want their own rights, they can climb back into their ships and go right back to wherever they came from. They have no rights here.”

  Swan leaned back in his chair, folding his powerful arms across his chest. Matthew did not like the way Sw
an was looking at him, as if he were trying to figure out how long he might survive in the mines.

  Swan stood up from his chair, scooting it across the floor to its original position. “We’ve got someone in the infirmary that needs some medical attention, Doc,” he said, placing his hands on his waist. “Come with me.” Two of the men that had stood guard outside the storage closet approached Matthew from behind, giving him the cue to get up from his chair and follow Swan out the door.

  The three men walked down the corridor in silence. Swan forged a path through the people also streaming out of the room, with Matthew following behind, as well as the two guards walking a pace to his rear. By the way the people made a path for Swan, Matthew could tell that he was not only the leader of the group, but feared as well. His confidence and bravado trailed behind him like a bridal train as he spoke loud enough for his voice to reach Matthew’s ears.

  “We found the pair of them a few weeks back on one of our trips to trade processed ore for supplies,” he said. Matthew could hear the amusement in his voice despite not being able to see his face. “Turned out that one group of people we trade with had kidnapped them on Earth in the hopes of selling them off as slave labor. I guess they were intended to be a matched set.”

  Matthew’s curiosity got the best of him. “What happened to them?”

  “The people who kidnapped him said they just shut down. They stopped talking, stopped eating, and stopped sleeping. They just sat there. I think you call it catatonia,” Swan said, turning around to give Matthew a sidelong glance. “When we got them here, we tried asking them a few questions, but they never said a word. One of them died a few days ago. There’s no place to bury anyone, so we just put the body up on the surface and let the sandstorms take it away.”

  Matthew’s sense of uneasiness pushed against his natural medical curiosity. “Who is the patient? Which one survived, the man or the woman?”