The Apostates

by Lars Teeney

  Keir stood for a minute, sipping on whiskey replaying the interaction in his head trying to parse what exactly he just did. He thought about the worst-case scenario. He asked himself if he had just burnt a bridge or if he started a battle, and if it’s a battle he could actually win. After a couple minutes of internal analysis, he finished his drink, set the glass on an end table and left the White House, en route to his branch headquarters.

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  Kate walked out into the night air toward her waiting motorcade. A large, black painted, armored vehicle was parked, and the attendant opened a heavy steel-plated door that swung upwards to reveal the rear passenger compartment. Inside was a man seated in darkness. She took her place beside him and the door was slid shut.

  “Welcome back Ms. Schrubb,” the figure said monotonously.

  “Hello, Rodrigo. Good to see you again. Boy, I tell you my family can be quite the wild ride. Not that you’d have any interest, of course,” Kate remarked jokingly.

  “Your familiar affairs are your own, Ms. Schrubb,” Rodrigo said unemotionally.

  “That’s right—Inquisitor Rodrigo, all business all the time,” Kate responded dryly.

  Inquisitor Rodrigo wore a standard L.O.V.E uniform, but with the addition of rank indicators. The uniform was grayish-blue in color. He wore a matching military style-barrette with the L.O.V.E. sigil blazoned on the side. He carried a baton-like cane with a lion head knob that was rumored to have added functionality. In many circles within the Regime, he was known as a bogeyman. The rumors may have been true, but weren’t corroborated because his service record was sealed. Some officials in the Regime had claimed to know details of Rodrigo’s past, but it was hearsay. One thing that none could dispute was that his organization was responsible for putting down two revolts through covert action alone. Rodrigo’s skull harbored many secrets.

  With Rodrigo at the helm of L.O.V.E., the organization developed a reputation that rivaled of the Cold War era K.G.B. in ruthlessness and brutality. Prior to Rodrigo the organization was amateurish, relying on street thug tactics to get things done. In the early days L.O.V.E. had no discipline and vision—now it was a professional, state-sponsored, terrorist group.

  Kate wondered what Rodrigo did with his time when he wasn’t working but then cut the thought short because it was disturbing to think on. He was her most capable operative and she trusted him the most out of anyone within the Regime, but probably because he was so robotic in demeanor.

  “Ms. Schrubb, I have news from the West,” Rodrigo announced dryly.

  “Yes, what is it, Rodrigo?” Kate asked.

  “We received an encrypted communiqué from our source in the resistance. The intelligence turned out to be patrol routes they use. One of our Ranger teams who were tracking the patrol acted unilaterally and attempted to ambush it. They were wiped out to a man. Undoubtedly the resistance has caught wind of our intentions and will most likely flip tactics and tighten security,” Rodrigo reported calmly.

  “Are you fucking kidding me? Why did they engage?” Kate shouted.

  “Not to worry, Ms. Schrubb. I have taken corrective actions to make sure it does not happen again. There is a silver lining here. This incident confirms that the Apostate’s base of operations is somewhere in the region of the California Great Lake. It is only a matter of time,” Rodrigo said forebodingly.

  “Inquisitor, I know you have not failed me yet. You are one of my most trusted confidants. But, I cannot stress the time sensitive nature for bringing these Apostates down. It has to be L.O.V.E. to do it,” Kate emphasized.

  “Ms. Schrubb, I am also fully aware of the rivalry between you and your brother. I know there is a competition brewing between your two wings and the prize is the Apostates,” Rodrigo said, almost cracking an asymmetrical smile.

  “Rodrigo. I—“ Kate was cut off mid-sentence.

  “Fortunately I share your need for immediacy in this matter, and even better…I work for you,” Rodrigo added, this time smiling.

  “Fair enough. As long as we are on the same page,” Kate snapped.

  “There is another matter. I was listening to the conversation with your brother about the mole that you dreamed up to try to scare him,” Rodrigo announced.

  Kate stared at him with a perplexed look on her face then barked, “You have the White House bugged? I didn’t order that.”

  “I know, but I felt it was necessary. Apologies for not running it by you,” Rodrigo turned his head to look out the window of the armored vehicle as it whisked by nameless slums, then he continued, “About your imaginary mole, I’m afraid it’s real, and in the inner circle.” This time, Rodrigo was genuinely smiling.

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  BORN AGAIN

  The darkness began to give way to faint, blurry light. The chaos of the universe was subsiding, Formless apparitions passed by with soft whispers. She felt their presence, but they were out of reach, some unintelligible barrier blocked the forms. How long had she drifted through these ethereal planes? Was she still herself? Had she become something else? Merged with Creation and the universe? She had no memory of how she wound up here or even who she was, or more appropriately, what she was. Lifetimes and eons seemed to pass and yet no time passed at all. The entirety of human history had come and gone and never existed while she had pierced the abyss. She was at the beginning and end of time all at once. Was this death or birth, or non-existence?

  The one thing she did remember was that face, the last face she looked at, in a different plane, and a different time. Light and sound began to coalesce around her, she could hear sounds that resembled words being spoken, but everything was scrambled. She could make out a light like that at the entrance of a tunnel, or that of the birth canal.

  She was drawn to the light—it was magnetic and she could not resist it. If it was her Creator calling her to the realm that spawned her, she was glad because the limbo in which she currently inhabited felt like an eternal prison. She willed herself to move through the abyssal space to the anomaly. She could feel tangible logic emanating from the light. It felt right—the only thing that made sense in this realm.

  “Greta!” a voice reached out to her from within the light. She was numb here, and yet she felt the sensations of all creation coursing through her at once. She missed pain and the certainty of existence. This abstraction was too cold and senseless. She yearned for something more ordered and less chaotic.

  “Administer the adrenaline, and if that doesn’t work hard reset her neural implant. It just may jolt her back to cautiousness,” a voice commanded. She began to comprehend words and the meaning of sentences. Slowly, reason and logic crept back into her mind.

  “Hard resetting the neural implant now. Will this cause any damage to her brain?” a man’s voice asked?

  “It shouldn’t. The neural implant should just restart its biological processes and if there is brain activity then it will begin to interface as normal, and should kick-start consciousness,” a woman’s voice answered.

  Greta could begin to feel the sensation of movement in her limbs. She approached the light that became brighter and stronger as she traveled through the space. Finally, she reached the crest of the opening and grasped at anything she could cling to.

  “She’s beginning to come around!” the man’s voice exclaimed.

  Greta opened her eyes and peered straight up. She could make out blurred figures but could not discern detail. She let out a gasp like she had been drowning and tasted air again.

  “Greta! Greta, can you understand what I am saying? Do you remember me?” a man standing over her asked excitedly.

  Greta began to remember who she was and what she had done to herself. She recalled that she had committed suicide. The thought made her hate herself. She remembered the last face she laid eyes upon before she slipped away. She remembered his voice, and the face that accompanied it. Greta shot looks around her rapidly, and locked onto one of the three faces hovering over her. She exa
mined his facial structure and those eyes—eyes she knew well.

  “You!” she yelled hysterically. As she gasped for air she continued to speak, “You aren’t here! You were dead! I died! We both...shouldn’t be here...” she trailed off—shock and exhaustion ruled her.

  “Greta! We’re alive! We brought you here—we made the arrangements...to get you away from the Regime!” the man attempted to explain. He seemed to realize that it was fruitless in her current state of mind and so he trailed off while squeezing her hand.

  “You have to let her rest first. She’s in shock,” a woman stated.

  “Marco...I...What is happening here...” Greta tried to speak, became faint, and her body went limp.

  “We need to get her on life support. We should also interface with her neural implant to monitor traffic. Verify that she is masked from the [Virtue-net]. We can’t risk any pings to the outside,” the woman instructed.

  As they punctured Greta’s arm for an I.V. she slipped in and out of consciousness. She felt the sensation of being lifted off of one bed and put on an adjacent gurney. That was the last sensation she felt as darkness crept in.

  ⍟ ⍟ ⍟

  The air in the mess hall was musty and stale. The Apostates had done the best they could to refurbish the ship and remove the stench of a hundred years of neglect. The room was featureless—no art to speak of. The walls were painted white and studded with rivets at the seams where sheet metal overlapped. Support beams crisscrossed the space. Tables that filled the room that had the appearance of industrial minimalism—no frills. The seats were fixed in place and attached to the tables via metal lattices that were bolted to the floor.

  The mess hall was filled with people and was bustling with activity. Some people were gathering food from the serving counter and were sitting down to eat, others were finishing up and clearing trays. Ravine sat at the head of a long table with a small group.

  “What the hell am I supposed to tell her? Even if she regains her wits, this shit will probably drive her insane,” Ravine exclaimed with a distraught tone. He looked down at his food and picked at it with a fork.

  “Don’t fret too much. We’ll let her rest up and get used to the idea of being alive. By then she’ll have accepted the both of you are here to stay,” Blaze-Scorch offered the consolation while glancing over Greta’s medical record.

  “I appreciate your thought, but I doubt it’s going to be that simple, Blaze,” Ravine lamented as he stared at the bulkhead.

  “Well, it’s been nearly eighteen hours since we first reanimated her from stasis. Maybe you should talk to her?” Aqua-Deluge was chewing on a piece of bread while speaking so that her words were slightly muffled. She washed the bread down with a sip of tea from a tin cup.

  “No, too soon. Hey, Blaze, you were a physician before you were reborn, how does the process work anyway?” Ravine inquired. He took the first bite of his meal, which by now was room temperature.

  “So, as you know the Regime installs microscopic neural implants in all of us as infants. The implant’s primary function is to connect the user’s brain to the [Virtue-net], and transmit data back and forth. However, they have a secondary function. The Regime can monitor vital signs and bodily functions through the implants. What’s more, they can even increase and decrease optimal body functions slightly— remotely. So, our contact in the Regime was able to smuggle data schematics and hardware source code for the implants. We used this source code to disconnect Greta’s implant from the [Virtue-net] and then we induced a coma-like state after we stabilized her condition. It gave the appearance that she was deceased—then we retrieved her body later,” Blaze explained while cleaning the last food morsels from her plate.

  Blaze-Scorch wore her hair dyed bright red, and was dressed in a form-fitted corset-like cuirass with a fishnet shirt worn over the top of it. The whole ensemble accentuated her frame, which was athletic and well endowed. Blaze had thorny rose tattoos hugging her shoulders and upper arms that were visible under the fishnet shirt. Her aesthetic was reminiscent of a World War Two era pin-up model.Ravine thought about how Blaze had helped numerous wounded personnel over the course of her service with the Apostates. Her latest success was saving Lore-Fiction’s life by removing his eye. The surgery was quick and dirty. He would have died if Blaze had not had medical experience.

  “Thanks for helping Greta,” Ravine offered.

  “Yes, thank our Regime contact. He was the one who gave us the information needed to perform the operation,” Blaze answered, “Let’s head to the infirmary and give Greta some answers.”

  Blaze-Scorch, Aqua-Deluge and Ravine-Gulch got up from the mess hall table, cleared their trays and exited the room. Ravine was visibly tense as the group wound through the rusted steel, grated floors inside the corridor. They came upon a hatchway. Blaze turned the creaky latch and oponed the door with a squeek that suggested a hundred years of lubricant neglect.

  They were in the infirmary now. Odd medical supplies and drugs were locked in protective cabinets—aged medical machinery lines the far wall. The immediate room had three beds within and only one was occupied. There were two adjoining room, an isolation chamber and another patient bedroom. Lore-Fiction occupied the adjoining room, recovering from the loss of his eye.

  Greta occupied the main room and was the only patient there. Other Apostate members had assembled in the room as well. Hades-Perdition leaned on the counter awaiting their arrival.

  “Glad you all could make it. I just wanted to let you know that our Regime contact is going to reach us via an encrypted channel on the [Apostate-net]—we all will be linked in. He has some things to explain to Greta—who probably wants some answers. Our contact will remain anonymous as usual,” Hades-Perdition explained, “I am receiving the incoming message, I’ll broadcast it wide.”

  The group was linked together within a virtual space in the mind. Retinal H.U.D.s activated, and video and audio feeds were established. Everyone viewed a visually obscured and voice modulated figure.

  “Greetings, everyone. Let me just say first and foremost that I am sorry that your patrol was ambushed by L.O.V.E. Rangers, and that Lore-Fiction was wounded. I strive to gather as much Regime intelligence to pass your way as possible, but L.O.V.E. is a shadow government in its own right. This I can tell you: they have surmised that your operating base is in the Great Lake region. L.O.V.E. will concentrate its efforts there until they find you. This complicates things and forces us to speed up the timeline quite a bit,” the figure announced, sounding like a cigarette smoker who had received a tracheotomy.

  “Now then, on to Greta’s...orientation. Greta, you can call me ‘Sam’,” the figure said.

  “Fuck you, and get out of my head. Why didn’t you let me die?” Greta asked hostilely. Her face was red with fury.

  “Greta, that would be a waste. You have a role yet to play in this drama whether you like it or not. I am sorry it is this way, but if you knew the stakes,” the voice attempted to persuade.

  “How can you do this against my will—and you bring me back to this coward?” Greta shot an icy look Ravine’s way.

  “Ravine committed the same crime you did: he took his own life. But, now he serves a greater good, just as you will. You see, everyone in this outfit is a former criminal, thief, drug addict, murderer or terrorist. They all have had past lives that marked them. Everyone here would have died in some fashion or another. All your lives were over. I stepped in and deemed it necessary for everyone to get a second chance to live again—to be born again. And to atone for past sins, by service in this group of...Apostates.” ‘Sam’ struck a more serious tone,

  “Even if this is how it occurred, what the fuck do you think I have to offer to some para-military group of terrorist, whack-jobs? I’m no soldier,” Greta protested, sitting up in her hospital bed.

  “Greta—well, first let me be clear about something. You are no longer known as Greta. You are now only known as Gale-Whirlwind,” the voice commanded.


  “Who do you think—” Greta was overruled mid-sentence.

  “Listen to me. You have been born again, but not in the religious sense. You see, your old lives have ended of your own accord. Because you all made that choice you ceded yourselves to my service. I resurrected you. I made alterations to the Regime implants. Just as the Regime used it to suppress your potential to keep you docile for easy control, I have used it to remove those latent blocks to unleash your hidden potential. The neural implants have been programmed with advanced weapons, tactical combat, and martial knowledge—you possess whether you realize it or not,” ‘Sam’ exclaimed.

  Greta, now Gale-Whirlwind, was silent but rubbed her temple and contemplated what he just told them. She broke her silence, “You can’t just take my name away like that!”

  “Gale, everyone here has given up their previous identities. Hades-Perdition used to be a L.O.V.E.R. They tried to kill him. He can’t go back. Aqua-Deluge was a prostitute who was “killed” by one of her johns. Blaze-Scorch was a gifted physician, who was selling medical supplies on the black market and harvesting organs. Lore-Fiction was a rapist, whom one of his victims came back for revenge. Myself, I am probably the biggest criminal among us, but I can’t go into that now. The point is there is no turning back. Even if I wanted to just let you walk out of here to be free, you are legally dead to the Regime, and you possess hacked implants. There is no other option but the Apostates.”As ‘Sam’ paused in his lecture the room was silent.

  Gale-Whirlwind noticed expressions of discomfort on the faces of the Apostate members, like they were reliving unpleasant memories from their past lives. She stared at a wall, still seething, but unable to muster any retort of value.

  “Why these stupid code names? Just compounds of synonyms—doesn’t really make sense,” Greta observed.

  “That is precisely the point. They mean nothing...but the Regime will believe it means something if they ever hear them. You are all nothing now, except instruments to achieve an end,” the robotic voice answered in a matter-of-fact tone.