True Born

by L. E. Sterling

  “How?”

  “Because, sister dear. It’s the same feeling I get whenever I’m around them. Especially Storm. Same feeling I’ve always had.” Margot swallows, her voice dropping quiet-quiet. “Just like that shiver I get whenever you’re near,” she whispers.

  ...

  It’s late. I listen, dry-eyed, while Margot sheds the odd tear. The NewsFeed is oddly silent on the attack on the Kain mansion. No mention of it makes the bulletins except to say that a “band of disgruntled followers of a popular street preacher led a protest today through the streets of Dominion.” No one talks of strange bombs, or whole streets given way to darkness and trees. There’s not even a whisper of casualties; no reports of deaths, although I reckon that’s the least surprising thing of all. They stopped mentioning numbers with that sort of thing long ago. Too many were dying each day, and they had to curb the panic.

  When the report is over, we look at each other. She feels it, too. If the NewsFeeds aren’t talking about it, what else haven’t they told us? We live such sheltered lives in the Upper Circle. But surely someone will notice an entire downtown block gone missing?

  But then, the Lasters are dwindling so fast. What if this cover-up has been engineered to prevent an even worse riot situation?

  I get to thinking about what people know and what they don’t know, the secrets we all keep. Mary Kain knows what they did to Margot in the Splicer Clinic, which means that Senator Kain knows, too. And who else: dull-eyed Perry Kain? Everyone? I haven’t told Margot yet, afraid of what she might do. Terrified of what she might not do.

  By the time Margot and I are packed, Storm has returned, a bloody Kira in tow.

  We make our way to his office. Beside me, Margot is dry-eyed but trembling. As we are invited in by a booming voice and come face to face with this Nolan Storm, her trembling gets worse.

  “What happened?” is the first thing out of my mouth.

  Kira stands beside the couch as Storm bends over her arm with antiseptic and gauze. Her face is a mask of bruises, mottled and swollen purple across her cheeks and around her eyes. A long purple line decorates her neck. Sequins hang off her dress in torn strips, the right strap dangling. She only glances at us as we march in. Storm doesn’t even look up as he stitches a jagged gash.

  “We can come back.” I motion to Kira.

  Just a flicker of his eyes, and he has taken us in. “If that were true, I doubt you would have brought your luggage with you,” he drawls, nodding to the matching bags set behind us. “Why don’t you just tell me what’s on your mind?”

  I take Margot’s shaking hand. “We’re leaving.”

  “I gathered that.” Storm cuts the thread and begins winding white gauze around Kira’s forearm as she sucks in her pain. “Do you think that’s wise, given the events of this evening?”

  This is not the same Nolan Storm I have become accustomed to dealing with. I don’t understand what I’m seeing. It’s as if two people share the same space, one superimposed upon the other. The human Nolan Storm hides underneath a mantle of power that shimmers from him, extends so far out from his body now that he is almost blinding to look at, fierce, terrible. Deadly.

  “I don’t know. Is it?” I answer curtly.

  Storm nods. “Kira,” he dismisses the limping True Born with a nod. “Sit down, ladies,” he commands as Kira skirts past us, her eyes flickering to mine for only an instant. I can’t be sure but there is the ghost of a smirk on her lips. I sink down on the couch beside Margot, but it’s me Storm stares at with those unearthly eyes. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”

  I don’t waste any time. “What are you?” Not who are you. “You sure as Moses aren’t human. And you aren’t True Born, either, so don’t try to pretend.”

  He crouches before me. “How would you know what True Borns are?”

  My voice cracks as I whisper back, “We’ve seen them. Fins on backs. Furry hands. What Jared is. Shifters, I guess. Mohawk—I mean, Penny. Not you.”

  “Yes, me too.”

  “No.”

  “Yes, Lucy,” he says my name gently, but his eyes are still violent, rivers filled with death. He runs a hand over the back of his neck, as though the antlers, more impressive than ever, have become a heavy burden. “A different kind, yes, but True Born. But you need to know what True Borns are to know what that means.”

  I open my mouth to argue. Margot twists my hand. A not-so subtle command for me to shut the hell up. “I want to hear this,” she cuts in.

  Storm sits on the couch opposite us and leans over his knees. “What do you think happened when the Plague came in?”

  “A massive increase in pollution,” I tell him, rattling off the lessons we’ve learned in school since we were small children. There had been breaches in nuclear energy plants. Ocean’s worth of radiation leached into the environment along with everyday manufacturing debris, plastics, mercury. All that pollution eventually led to increased metabolic rates and genetic anomalies, resulting in the evolution of an ancient earth-class disease now busy chewing its way through the human population.

  “You’re about half right.”

  Margot crosses her legs and tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. “What then?”

  “We evolved. That’s what species have always done to survive massive changes in our environment. That is also the reason why humans are so susceptible to the Plague.”

  He says it so casually. Humans.

  “But here’s where evolutionary theories diverge. The Plague isn’t just a reaction to our environment, although I’ll grant you, it sure sped it up. It’s a symptom of something else, something much bigger—an evolution that began eons ago. And though this current era is marked by a sudden shift… Wait, I’ll show you.” Storm jumps over to his orderly bookshelf and pulls a giant tome from a shelf taller than the rest. He thumbs over to a full two-page photograph of a stone slab and lays the picture before us.

  The slab has been sculpted into a frozen scene: behind a winged man stands a tall, ruler-straight throne made for giants. His are the wings of dragonflies, intricately patterned. In one hand he holds a lightning bolt like he’s about to throw it. In the other, a snake. Before him is an audience—men in headdresses and huge, sleek jungle cats with human eyes and collars around their necks crouch at his feet—and all around the scene someone has sculpted very detailed, realistic tropical trees. The back of my head prickles with premonition. I feel as though I’m about to drown.

  “You know what this is?”

  Margot answers, as breathless as I feel, “What?” My heart pumps furiously as my eyes race over the carved images again and again, trying to make sense.

  “Our history ties us to the past. Our future is in our blood. You know what the True Borns are, Margot?” Eyes huge, she shakes her head. But it’s Storm’s eyes I can’t look away from suddenly. Fathomless pools of molten gray, steeped in something I don’t even understand, something I’d as soon call alien. “This. The resurrection of gods.”

  I tamp down a nervous giggle. “These are just pictures, myths,” I argue, reading the caption beneath the image. Bas-relief of Neo-Babylonian tablet, circa 1122 BCE, found at the temple of Esagila, depicting the supreme Babylonian god, Marduk.

  As I stare down at the image, something about the cat pulls at me—worse, reminds me of Jared. Suddenly I’m not so sure anymore.

  Storm continues in a voice as soft as silk. “Marduk was First. He was First Born of what they called the True Born gods. And from his body the humans were made. But his first children weren’t human, Lucy. They were us.”

  Slowly, as though not to startle us, Storm heads back to his bookshelf. This time he takes down something I’ve never seen before, a dark cylinder covered in symbols and weird writing that looks like chicken scratch. “Marduk had in his possession a covenant. Call it a pact.” He cradles the cylinder before setting it down before us. “Marduk’s people declared him steward of the land, of man and beast, and when he decided it was
time, he passed it to his children, who passed it to their children. Right down the line. To me.”

  I squint up at an eerily bright Storm. “You’re saying your ancestor is an ancient Babylonian god.”

  His answering smile dazzles. “Marduk didn’t just belong to Babylon. He was the chief deity for Mesopotamia and beyond. But he went by other names, too, over the ages. Cernunnos the Horned One. And yes, I’m telling you this being was my great-great-great grandfather. Am I saying he was a god?” Storm shakes his head. “No. I wouldn’t go so far. But I am telling you that since Antiquity, no one had any idea what to do with people who could transform into animals in the blink of an eye. People born with the strength, agility, and power of nature coded into their very DNA—even in that era, when what seemed like strange and mystical events occurred every day. They worshipped Marduk like a god. And one day they all just disappeared from the face of the earth. Look.” He flips to another page in the book to a painting of ruins covered in moss, hanging down like bunches of grapes.

  “What is this?”

  “The Hanging Garden of Babylon, one of the ancient wonders of the world.” Margot looks at the page with fascination as, with a lifted eyebrow, I urge Storm to continue. “Marduk created it for the King of Babylon. No one knows what it looks like because it disappeared one day. Just as Marduk did. And all his True Born children. Until now.”

  I feel my sister’s eyes on me, heavy and dark. The trees, she mouths.

  I turn my attention back to the stone tablet. It’s so unbelievable, but Margot is right: there it is. In Dominion trees are scarce enough, scrawny and thin since there’s so little real sunlight. There are no trees like the one that has suddenly sprouted in the middle of Elizabeth and Perth Avenue. Even among all the fancy houses of the Upper Circle, with their greenhouses and gardens, I have never seen its like. Yet there it grows: the same tree that grew from the bomb thrown onto the streets below Storm’s tower. Only, this tree is etched onto a dull stone tablet in the middle of a glossy page, recorded over two and a half thousand years ago. Caught like an amber fern.

  The trees in Marduk’s throne room. The tree, growing quickly and mysteriously in Dominion’s street.

  I bow my head. The silver-edged clock on the wall ticks frantically. Storm has them everywhere, these clocks, all nearly identical. School clocks, big and round, with dark letters and plain faces. I wonder why he watches time.

  “If it’s true,” I ask, “what do you think happened?”

  Storm fingers the etchings on the cylinder. “I wish I knew.”

  “I thought you said this guy was your ancestor. Don’t you know about him?” In the Upper Circle, pedigree is practically printed money.

  “I don’t really know what happened. For all I know, the True Borns went extinct. Or into hiding.” He smiles at us gently.

  Margot pinches her leg. I rub my flesh where she has hurt herself. A call for me to take a leap beyond the world of clocks and genes. And what will I find there? Something more frightening than men who turn into lions and horned gods?

  And more frightening still: what will be revealed in our own blood, my sister’s and mine?

  “Do they know? The rabb—” I catch myself. “The people fighting with the preacher men. Do they know what you are?”

  Storm’s body language is instantly alert, tense as trip wire. “What do you mean?”

  “Evolve or die. Did they get that from you? From the True Borns?”

  It had never occurred to me to put it together like that. But now that I have it seems so simple, so true.

  Another smile, this time with a deep dimple. “No, not from me. But it’s a thought that has intrigued me now and again. No one knows my origins, our origins, but my people and me. And now you. I’d like to keep it that way, if you don’t mind.” Storm gets up and walks over to the bar, pouring himself a generous dollop of a rich, caramel alcohol.

  “So the True Borns came from your ancestor, but you’re still different from the True Borns,” I say, wishing I didn’t sound so accusing.

  Nolan Storm’s face darkens as he takes a sip of his drink. “I’m telling you that the True Borns are a race resurrected from the ancient line my ancestor began. That line created the bulk of humanity. And I’m telling you that particular genetic expressions from that ancient line are being reasserted. And I have been marked to lead them,” he says pointedly. He takes another sip, his glass punctuating his words as he swirls the dark amber liquid. “What I’m saying, ladies, is that all your teachers are wrong. True Borns aren’t an expression of genetic regression. True Borns are the reassertion of strong genes that existed a millennium ago. Genetic progression.”

  His huge frame blocks the light in the room as he gets up and stalks over to the window, taking heavy steps. He looks fatigued, his shoulders drooping. And I suddenly wish I hadn’t been so stubborn.

  “Storm,” I venture, halfway to an apology, “thank you for trusting us with this information. We will be very careful with it. And we—we appreciate all you’ve done for us,” I tell him.

  Storm turns his head and stares at us. “Do you really think it’s safe to leave, Lucy? Do you really think I could just let you walk out of here when your safety, the safety of your sister, is my prime concern right now?”

  My shoulders sag. He’s right. How could I drag Margot out onto the streets right now, into our house, empty of all but a couple mercs, when the rabble are in dissent? How could I take us away from the protection of Nolan Storm and his True Borns? Even more importantly, why?

  I know the answer. It’s the small, selfish voice I wish I could drown out. The one that tells me that I need to run away from the relentless disapproval in Jared’s eyes. All that anger over one little word. And what of it? My own anger starts to bubble inside of me. Margot squeezes my hand. And just like that, the decision is made.

  “Okay.” I blow out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding. “We’ll stay a little while longer,” I say, already knowing I’ll regret this. “Just until we hear from our parents.”

  I don’t catch so much as a glimpse of Jared until the next day when Margot has finally managed to heckle Storm into letting us go for a walk. I’m about crawling out of my skin by the time we’re ready, coats on, boots on, scarves pulled tight. And then I turn around and he’s there, leaning against the wall, regarding me with a shuttered expression.

  My heart knocks against my chest as he slowly uncurls himself from the wall, arms folded, and swaggers over to us. “If you’re ready, let’s go,” he says quietly to Margot. Me he ignores altogether.

  Outside, it seems like every wall in Dominion is covered in the same red graffiti. Two eyes, crossed in the middle. Here and there the new slogan of the preacher men is written in sharp, careful letters. Evolve or die. Margot pulls me over to a wall where instead of red the eyes are worlds colored in blues and browns and white.

  My sister takes a few paces back, tilting her head at the wall art. “What do you reckon it means?” I shake my head. Margot walks up to the wall and traces one of the worlds. “It’s beautiful, though, isn’t it?” I shrug, feeling painfully shy around the True Born shadow behind us. “Let’s keep going, Mar,” I call to my sister.

  We round the corner to Main Street, where most of the most functional shops in Dominion still exist. Did exist. There are only a couple of shops on the street that still have windows. Most are now just the charred skeletons of stores: blackened timbers and scorched bricks. Someone has already scavenged through the wreckage, too, it seems. The sidewalks are littered with wrappers discarded from packages, broken glass, the odd glove or sweater tossed carelessly and abandoned. My eyes fill with tears. Beside me, Margot takes my hand, both of us overwhelmed with horror.

  “Who could do this?” she whispers, quiet-quiet.

  Jared comes up behind us. “We can’t stay here.” He presses on something in his ear and murmurs a description of the chaos.

  “This happened last night, didn’t it?” I say, pic
king up a brick that had come loose from the building. “The preacher men and their followers did this. Didn’t they?” Jared eyes me uneasily, but he says nothing. “How can you defend them? How could you possibly defend people who would tear down the world?”

  Something sparks in Jared’s eyes as he takes a giant step forward. “Let’s get something clear. They’ve torn down your world. How many Lasters do you reckon can afford to shop on Main?”

  “Does that excuse their violence? Does that make it okay for you, somehow?”

  Jared’s jaw twitches as he stares at the swath of destruction running down the street as far as the eye can see. “No,” he says. When he turns to me, I can see it in his face: the bleak acceptance of a violent world. And something else: maybe, just maybe, he can see my point of view. His next words prove it. “No, it doesn’t. Nothing could excuse this.”

  Jared turns and takes a few steps toward the blown out glass of what used to be a tailor’s shop. “Jared.” My voice grates out, harsh and angry. But whatever I was going to say is forgotten as I spy a figure standing across the street.

  It’s the boy who chased me down the alley. The preacher’s boy. I can just make out the defiant lines of his face. His shirt is torn and grubby, and it hangs off of his gaunt frame so that he looks like a dressed-up skeleton.

  Jared has spotted him, too. He starts walking toward the boy, but when the boy makes our bodyguard he breaks into a run and disappears around the corner. I catch up with Jared, who stops dead center in the street. “Did you recognize him?” I ask as adrenaline spikes through my veins. “The boy from the alley.”

  “Yes.”

  “I reckon he’s one of the preacher’s boys. We saw him with Father Wes.”

  Jared pivots abruptly, taking my arm and dragging me back to where Margot waits.

  Surprised, I struggle in his grip. “Wait, aren’t we going to go after him?”