by David Beers
Rhett didn’t nod, gave no sign of affirmation.
David broke eye contact and stepped outside of the campsite, a bit closer to the beach. Reinheld was down there, as was Brinson, though Reinheld had gone on a walk alone. Brinson was now by herself, lying on her side. Rhett hadn’t checked to see if she was sleeping or not; he didn’t care. David would decide what happened with her.
“What are we going to do?” Christine asked.
They had all spent one night together, but no one had brought up what came next. Rhett hadn’t said anything because he was simply glad to be around David. He didn’t want to move forward, not yet. He wanted a bit more time with just these two, because once everything started, this respite from turmoil would break.
“We’re going to wait a day,” David said. He looked up into the sky, staring straight at the clouds. “Maybe two. Every available ship and man from all the Ministries will be heading toward that globe. Then, once everything is in place there, I’ll show myself to the rest of our followers.”
“Chaos,” Rhett said. “It’ll be chaos everywhere. They won’t have enough enforcement to guard their Ministries, because they’ll all be focused on the Globe.”
David nodded, still looking in the sky. “And then the three of us go to the Nile River, and we finish it.”
“What about her?” Christine asked.
David looked to the transport, the bundle of gray strands lying inside.
“I’ll deal with her tonight,” David said.
The rest of the day had passed easily enough, except for David dreading nightfall. Tomorrow he would deal with the infidel and her lover, but tonight he had to deal with his sister.
And even after everything she’d done, he didn’t want to.
David stood outside the transport.
He looked at the gray light wrapped around her, both protecting her and holding her captive. The strands were providing her with water, though she would probably be hungry—not that it mattered much.
He stared for a long time, the moon moving higher in the sky. No one ventured down to the beach, and David knew no one would. Even the infidel had walked far away; he couldn’t even see her from where he stood.
He thought about when he and Rebecca were kids.
He thought about their parents being murdered, blood and death mixing together in his mind like poisonous gasses.
He thought about the orphanage, where they beat him and left her alone. Yet, it was still the two of them.
David thought about the years on the street, him learning how to steal and connive and hurt in order to make sure she stayed alive. He’d never told her that, but it was the truth. All those years where they had to fight for their meals, he did it because of her. If it had been him, alone? He would have starved to death. Most likely, he wouldn’t have escaped the orphanage. He grew strong because of her, because more than anything he needed to live so that she wouldn’t be alone.
And now, standing on this beach, he was alone. Rhett and Christine would murder this woman for him, but that didn’t change any of the loneliness he felt. His sister, his blood, the only family he had left … was lost to him.
Go forward, he thought. There’s no other choice.
The strands around Rebecca started to unwrap themselves, gray static peeling off and then dying a few seconds after. The cocoon covering her slowly fell away to nothing.
Rebecca lay on the transport’s floor, looking the exact same as she had yesterday. She didn’t move her body, but only shifted her head so that she could see him.
David’s eyes were calm.
Hers weren’t, but full of rage.
“Don’t ever do that again,” she said. “Kill me if you want, but never do that again.”
David remained still, staring at her as if he didn’t know her. “You give me orders now?”
Rebecca pushed herself up to sitting without looking away. “You may be the Prophet, but you’ve never owned me.”
She stood up, though she didn’t step outside of the transport. She was a few inches higher than him, a few arm lengths in distance.
“Why?” he said. “Why did you do it?”
The two stared in silence, the ocean wind whipping by David and into the transport. Rebecca’s face was hard in that silence, though it slowly changed, and beneath the moonlight he saw tears swirling in her eyes.
“Because, you wouldn’t stop on your own,” she finally said.
“Stop? Fucking stop?” David felt the rage he had feared coming to him now, breaking through concrete barriers he had tried to erect, a battering ram with a lion’s head on it—unfazed and unstoppable. “WHY WOULD I FUCKING STOP?”
His voice echoed up and down the beach, easily back to the campsite, but David didn’t care.
“Because!” Rebecca shouted back, her own voice not capable of rising to the level of his. “Because this is madness! It’s always been madness! We just couldn’t see it!”
David lunged forward before he knew it was happening. The back of his hand smacked across her face, and her head jerked to her left. He stood with his arm still extended, blood on his knuckles. Rebecca didn’t move. Neither of them did.
He’d never put his hands on her before.
David’s eyes were gray, and if he was stunned, the gray wasn’t. It swirled out from his eyes, shining its eerie light across the night’s darkness. The strands didn’t move toward Rebecca, only remained stretching out of his eyes like thin strips of seaweed.
“It’s madness,” she said. “It has to be stopped.”
“And when did you discover this, Rebecca?” he asked, his voice low, rippling with anger.
“It doesn’t matter when.”
“WHEN.”
A few seconds of silence passed, and then she whispered, “Five years ago.”
“HOW.”
Rebecca shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” She looked up, blood dripping from her nose and lip. The tears that had sat in her eyes had now spilled over; she was crying, and not from the slap’s pain. “You wouldn’t stop, regardless of what I did, and yet you have to. This has to end. What you’re doing, what It wants to do. Have you ever asked yourself, David, what It wants? Even once, have you sat back and thought about such a simple question?”
David let his hand collapse to his side. A drop of blood fell to the transport, landing silently. The gray strands twisted from his eyes as if mocking Rebecca’s words.
“No, Rebecca, because that doesn’t matter.” His voice was a whisper, hardly louder than the wind blowing through the transport. “I’ve been summoned, just as you have. You took my Blood, remember? You injected it into yourself and swore allegiance to It. There is no asking what It wants.”
“And that’s why I set you up, David. Why I would do it again and again and again. Because you’ll never stop. You literally rose from the dead to complete this.”
David’s rage had driven him this far, but something nagged at him. A question, somehow tied to the other like him—the girl from the Old World.
“What made you start thinking like this? What made you become so lost?”
“Are we done here?” Rebecca asked.
He shook his head. “Tell me.”
“No. Now do whatever it is you want, David.”
Brother and sister looked at each other, one with bright, static filled eyes, the other’s shrouded by darkness. The Prophet’s rage simmered, not exploding out. He’d never seen himself ending up here; he could have sooner seen himself killing Rhett than his sister.
But what other choice did he have?
To let her live?
Her face was still defiant, believing thoughts that didn’t even matter. She was a human, what she thought of the Unformed’s wishes were less than insignificant. Yet just as David would walk to his death for the Unformed, she stood here ready to do the same against It.
The gray strands snaked further out from his eyes, forming two powerful bands then wrapping around her throat. They didn
’t burn, nor squeeze too tight.
“You’ve always been my everything,” he said.
“No. It is. Ever since It came to you.”
“Then you were second,” he said. “And I should have been second to you as well.”
“We just put different things first. You put the Unformed. I put humanity.”
The gray strands tightened some and David saw her face grimace. She could still breathe, but he felt the static heating up, ready to do what it had come out for. Tears fell from his sister’s eyes and dripped over the thick cords.
I can’t, he thought. No matter what she’s done or will do, I can’t.
The light died in his eyes, and as it did, the strands flowing from them did as well.
The two stood in darkness.
“Go,” he said. “Away from me. If I see you again, Rebecca, I will kill you, because I’ll know that you mean to kill me.”
He turned his back on her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but he didn’t know what she was apologizing for, and he didn’t ask either.
“Go. Take that transport and leave.”
He stepped out into the night and walked away from his sister. Neither knew it then, but they would see each other again, and both would bring death with them.
“Why?” Rhett asked as the transport rose into the air. He sat by the fire with Christine, watching the ship leave, Rebecca Hollowborne inside. “You let her live. Why?”
He didn’t look to David as he asked the question, but stared upward, almost unable to believe what he was witnessing. The woman who had nearly ended everything, betrayed everyone, and killed him, was fleeing and with David’s permission.
Rhett realized too late he should have been looking at David instead of the sky, that it might have been smarter to silence his mouth instead of asking questions.
“Where’s Reinheld?” David asked.
That got Rhett’s attention, the anger in David’s voice unable to hide. He looked down and momentarily forgot his own anger, because David’s eclipsed everything.
“WHERE IS HE!”
“On the beach,” Christine said.
“Get him. Now.”
Rhett stood and looked at David just outside the campsite. He knew what was coming, and he didn’t want to see it. “David, maybe just take a second—”
“Now,” David said, the word itself a threat.
Rhett looked down at his feet and nodded.
He walked down to the beach, taking his time. He could have called Reinheld using his nanotech, but the longer he was able to keep him from David, the better this would turn out. It’s not that he really cared about what happened to Brinson, only that David shouldn’t be making the decision now. Not after what just happened with Rebecca. Rhett had heard the shouting, hair rising on his arms. He’d seen light glowing from the transport, sure that David was going to end her.
It hadn’t happened, though. Instead, the traitorous bitch took off, and now David’s raw rage was looking for someone to take it out on.
He finally found Reinheld. He was sitting alone; since promising his life for the infidel’s, he hadn’t spent much time around her—Rhett didn’t know how great of a strategy that was, but alas, Rhett wasn’t the one that made the promise.
“David wants to see you.”
Reinheld nodded as if he knew this was coming.
The two stood and walked back across the beach, then up to the fire. Maybe 20 minutes had passed, but Rhett only needed to glance at David to understand time had done nothing to calm him.
“What has she decided?” he asked as Reinheld stepped into the firelight.
Rhett watched Reinheld almost whither under the Prophet’s glare. His eyes weren’t alight, but Rhett knew the man couldn’t handle this, let alone what came next.
“I need more time,” he said.
“You don’t have any more time,” David answered. “What’s her answer?”
“It’s only been a day,” Reinheld said, Rhett barely able to believe the man was talking with how shaken his face looked. “I needed more time when I converted. I needed over a year. She needs the same.”
David had been sitting, looking up at Reinheld. He stood now, and Rhett stared at his eyes, watching for the slightest twinkling of static. They remained quiet.
“The Unformed will be here in only a few days. She has no more time. So tell me now, what’s her answer?”
Reinheld looked at his feet but said nothing.
“Bring her to me.”
Rhett said nothing. He sort of felt for Reinheld and what was to come, but he had made the mistake. Not Rhett. Not David. He had put his life on the line for someone without the Blood, and now he would have to face the consequences of such an action. Yet, this was because of Rebecca, not Reinheld, nor even Brinson.
He wasn’t going back down to the beach, though. He hadn’t seen the woman when he went looking for Reinheld, and David wouldn’t dare tolerate being made to wait longer.
It’s Scoble, he said, his nanotech contacting hers. Come to the campsite.
There was, of course, the chance the woman might run, but where could she really go? This island was small, and eventually she’d be found. Rhett sort of hoped she would run, though, as it would give David more time to calm down.
Minutes passed and Rhett received no response.
“She’s not answering.”
David looked to Reinheld. “Where is she?”
“I haven’t seen her since this afternoon.”
David stepped forward then, passing by the two men and beyond the campsite toward the beach. “You call her,” he said to Reinheld.
Rhett watched green pinpoints light up in Reinheld’s eyes. He was obeying, but Rhett had an idea that something was wrong here. Something beyond her simply hiding in the trees.
His eyes remained green, five seconds turning into thirty, and Rhett knew he was talking to the woman.
She’s gone, he thought, and you know exactly where she went.
Rhett kept quiet. David’s back remained to them, and Christine only stared at Reinheld from where she sat.
Finally, the green in his eyes faded.
“She’s gone,” and his voice was death personified. “She went with your sister.”
Rhett thought about stepping forward, about saying something to David, but there simply wasn’t time.
Gray webs ripped from his eyes, circling back around him and wrenching hold of Reinheld before anyone else could even open their mouths. Rhett stared on, horrified, as David remained facing the ocean and the strands wrapped themselves around Reinheld’s neck. They lifted him 10 feet into the air, and he gasped for breath. He reached for the strands, trying to pull them away, but burning his hands the moment he touched them. Smoke rose into the sky as the man strangled above them all.
“David,” Rhett said. “He has the Blood, David. He is of the Unformed.”
Christine came to her feet, staring up at the dying man. Rhett looked to her for a single second, seeing horror across her face too.
“This isn’t Stellan. There is no reason for this. The woman escaped because you fucking let Rebecca go. Had you killed her—”
His words were cut off as gray strands leapt out at him. They took his neck as quickly and tightly as they had Reinheld’s, then hoisted him up. The two hung together, and just as Reinheld had tried, Rhett reached for the strands. Hot pain blazed across his hands and he pulled them away. He felt no heat on his neck, only the outside was burning.
His lungs seized up, trying to find air, but his throat closed off from it.
“David,” he said, his words barely above a whisper. “David, no.”
“DAVID!” Christine shouted, Rhett barely able to see her rush toward the Prophet. “STOP!”
Another web of light shot out and grabbed her, and she joined the two already hanging. The night grew quiet except for their stunted gasping.
Rhett struggled against the chords, his hands back on them agai
n, not caring if it burned, only trying to stop from dying. The smell of burning flesh filled his nose and his vision started blurring.
“David,” he tried again, not knowing if the Prophet heard his words at all.
His eyes were slowly closing, and his arms fell down to his sides. The panic was receding. The need to breathe deadening. He was slowly feeling better and better. Rhett couldn’t really even see the other people hanging with him, nor David below.
It was okay.
Everything would be just fiiiii—
He hit the ground hard. He lay there, looking up at the branches and stars, breathing in haggard gasps, his vision slowly coming back to him. He didn’t look around, though. Didn’t even try to move—just lay there, his body and throat hurting, his lungs full of fire.
Finally, after a minute or so, he sat up coughing. David wasn’t in front of the campsite, but further down on the beach. Rhett hacked roughly for a few seconds before he realized the other two were doing the same.
He looked over at them, and their eyes were on him as well—pale terror gripping everyone.
Never in Rhett’s life had David attacked him before.
Rachel and Nicki
Rachel Veritros had been riding just under the Unformed’s radar for a millennium, doing her absolute best to disrupt Its plans.
After 1,000 years, she now found herself at a loss as to what she was watching. It wasn’t something she understood, nor did it make any logical sense. Veritros had recognized that her connection to the Unformed, and then Its connection to humanity, had allowed her to contact people. Only two—the Prophet’s sister and then this new girl. Nicki Sesam. Yet, logically that had made sense.
Veritros had understood such reasoning.
Now, though, she watched a world she didn’t understand. The young woman’s powers had always been strong; Veritros felt that from the beginning. Her engineered brain becoming active when the Unformed’s powers were flowing across Earth—the combination had created something special.