Ascension

by Christopher De Sousa

  But when Monica opened her eyes, she quickly learned there must be yet another Corrupted present. For as she glanced downward, she could no longer see the material of Margaret’s pant leggings; from the waist down, the Senator was now covered in a blanket of crawling insects.

  “There’s little use in struggling,” chortled what sounded a feminine voice. “For these particular insects of mine secrete an enzyme which paralyze its prey.”

  Kishar…, where has she gone? Monica instantly wondered, praying that the guardian was still capable of fighting.

  But her eyes soon came to rest upon the little sprite who lay bound within the gloved grasp of this masked Corrupted. Their hopes were dashed. With a wicked smile, this womanly shaped creature whose horns pierced up through her hood, stepped toward her.

  “For the sake of some friendly competition, is there any way we can measure which one of our tricks is the more potent?” the horned Corrupted questioned, glancing back at her peers.

  “On another note, remind me to dispose of that worthless Reaper once we’ve brought an end to this organisation,” Justin requested, rubbing at his neck. “Rabisu has clearly outlived his usefulness.”

  The masked Corrupted grumbled. “I could have told you as much quite a while ago. But for some reason our lord keeps giving him second chances.”

  “We have company,” the horned Corrupted then hastily informed them, glaring toward the door.

  Monica could immediately recognize Walter’s gruff voice barking out orders from within the hall. Soon Lance, accompanied by both Gavin and Aleisha, burst through the door with revolvers drawn. They proceeded to fire upon the Corrupted pair, but the masked Corrupted effortlessly waived the bullets away through the sweeping motion of his cloak. Justin also had quickly moved to disarm the operatives of their weapons; while the horned Corrupted sought to restrain them through her paralyzing swarm.

  As the swarm had now dispersed to engulf the other operatives, Monica was only able to look on as there were now insects creeping up her own leggings, their paralyzing agent adding to the debilitating grasp of these shadows about her body. In one last desperate attempt, and having suddenly regained control over her arms, she stretched out with open palms and telekinetically thrust the bedside dresser toward the masked Corrupted. But Justin, having stepped forward, countered her efforts with his own energy before it reached them. With the bedside dresser now lying on its side, she could only cry out in vain as the insects took hold of her arms and scurried toward her face.

  Lance cried down into his wrist communicator. “Sir, we need backup.”

  “Fascinating device,” she heard the masked Corrupted comment, as he closely examined Lance’s wrist. “Still, such things seem primitive when one can communicate telepathically. I suspect the day will never come when humankind reclaims its lost arts...”

  Justin glared back at him, indignant. “Am I not proof enough? Some of us have ascended to the next level. Wouldn’t you agree Senator? Ms Hawthorne?”

  “Why now of all times does he choose to return,” Margaret murmured. “Have you any idea who you serve?”

  Justin retrieved a cloak. “I can assure you that I’m well aware. My lord has simply lost patience with humanity. He has waited for us too long to regain the most valued qualities we once held. And so he must rebuild this world anew. Only those worthy will then live to serve his will.”

  “Young lord, may my children feed upon what remains of their energy?” the horned Corrupted asked him.

  “No, we shall spare their lives for the time being. Besides, there will soon be plenty of opportunities for them to get their fill.”

  He knelt before Lance. “Your Indigo’s will find Ms Hawthorne and the Senator alive within the grounds of Anabasis High. Tell your masters what you’ve seen, for we’ll be waiting.”

  “If you intend to use us as bait, it won’t work,” Monica clamoured, as the insects crawled about her lips and injected their toxin.

  “I suppose that depends upon whether the organisation values your lives or not,” Justin told her, as the insects slowly approached her eyes. “Now that you are numb and unable to feel any pain, I pray you find peace. For when my lord resurfaces, there will be none.”

  Chapter 23

  Although she’d been dating Justin for only a few months, Katherine felt aggrieved by the organisation’s suspicions of her boyfriend. Worse still she’d been forbidden going to visit him. Despite her suspicions that he’d cheated on her, she thought of what he must be going through there alone in hospital, and with no one there to support him. This made her desire to be by his side all the greater. Despite concerns for his wellbeing or hers, she needed to cling to anything that had made her happy before this misery began. But when she reflected on it, aside from the basketball and the tragic story of his parent’s untimely deaths at sea, she really didn’t know him well enough to disregard the organisation’s concerns.

  As she stood outside her room, she decided to do something proactive. Walter had reminded her that she had a history test next week and should take the time to study, and study was exactly what she had on her mind as she hustled along the corridor. Albeit, the study she intended to occupy her time with, was unlikely to help her in any upcoming assessment.

  “Blake, have we got a library? Or at least some place where I can study in silence?” She asked, upon passing him by.

  Dumbfounded with her question, he pointed back toward the training facility. “We do have a library, but this is starting to become disconcerting. Tell me: what have you done with the real Katherine Munroe?”

  “Where specifically,” she urged, not willing to waste more time in his presence.

  “Follow me…,” he sighed, as he led her back along the corridor and into the training facility.

  Upon reaching the opposite side of the facility, he punched an identification code into a control panel before yet another secure doorway.

  How many rooms does this facility house? And are all these security measures really necessary? She wondered, as she followed Blake down a winding hallway.

  He continued to gaze back at her with incredulity. “It’s the first room on your left.”

  Inside this room, and as expected, there were numerous columns of book bearing shelves and each categorized by way of the English alphabet. But as she looked deeper into the library, beyond the range of shelves labelled with English letters, she found an entire shelf dedicated to, and labelled with very peculiar symbols. As she scanned each book’s spine, her eyes soon came to rest on the markings of an Egyptian deity.

  “Well that wasn’t so difficult to find…,” she whispered to herself, as she struggled to wrench a large leather-bound tome from the shelf.

  “What is it you’re looking for?” Anzu questioned, the guardian having appeared behind her and scaring her half to death.

  “This here…,” she murmured, her heart in her throat. “I thought it might shed some light on the true identities of those Corrupted we’d fought.”

  As she gazed down at its cover, she noticed that the mark on its spine was also on its front. Embroidered with gold strands, and embossed in the leatherwork, was an unusual looking half animal and half human hybrid; with long rectangular ears, and a large snout like that of an aardvark.

  She heard Blake snigger from over her shoulder. “Most productive….”

  “You know, it’s rather rude to sneak up on people.”

  “Demonology of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia; the histories of upper and lower Egypt, and the Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian and Assyrian empires…such a long title,” he said, reading across its bulky cover.

  “I’m trying to find anything that might help us with combatting these corrupted.”

  “The further back we search for something in history; the less factual evidence there is to prove its existence,” he stated, as though he believed his words were unquestionable.

  She snarled at him – agitated, wishing he’d go away. “You know what Blake
? You’re not nearly as smart as you think you are.”

  “And this is coming from the girl with such poor grades and study habits… Believe me, if there was anything worth finding, I would have found it by now,” he snapped. “Most of what you’ll find pertains to myth; the accounts of so many who’ve failed to understand what they’ve actually witnessed.”

  “Are you quite finished? Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to read in silence. This is a library after all.”

  Once Blake had finally left them, Katherine pressed forward, arduously flipping through a large quantity of the tome’s pages. Her guardian had also decided to get a closer look, as he pounced up on a free chair next to her and proceeded to scan between pages for anything useful.

  “Whether the records of history are indeed fact, fiction, or outside the scope of humankind’s understanding; what those in the past claimed to have witnessed, may possess insight into how to vanquish these Corrupted here today,” said Anzu, supporting her efforts.

  “There must be something here we can draw upon. If I recall, the earthen Corrupted spoke of Namtar’s Reaper?”

  “He has many Corrupted which carry out his bidding,” said Anzu. “As I understand it, those who hold a place in his throne room, or control a segment of his domain, have risen to the status of a Reaper.”

  “When that Corrupted pair first attacked us, didn’t they refer to one another as brother and sister…,” she mumbled, frantically sifting through the tome’s pages. “The twins! I remember now. I learned about them when I first read this book.”

  As she sifted through the pages, she soon came to a dark and graphic illustration.

  She grinned back at Anzu. “Look familiar?”

  The dark and graphic illustration depicted a sibling pair – a gaunt figure donning a pale mask of porcelain, and his sister enshrouded in a sea of insects.

  Anzu turned to her. “You have this book at home?”

  “Yeah, and as a kid it’s about the only book I’ve read multiple times. It was mainly the illustrations that caught my attention. But it was through this book, and a sketching my mother had left me, that I’ve taken up such an interest in the arts.”

  She casually flicked back through the tome and toward its front. Then she stopped at the page she’d wanted to find, she raised the tome for Anzu to get a better view. At the page’s centre, there was an illustration of the guardian.

  He gasped, his golden eyes gazing intently at the image. “It’s a picture of me?”

  She flipped back through the pages until she reached those depicting of the sibling pair. She then read: “Alu, a demon conceived in shadow, which feeds upon the dreams and nightmares of mere mortals. Lilith, the demon who feeds on what her swarm consumes. Well, they both fit the description of what we’ve witnessed.”

  Hours had passed since she’d first begun her concentrated research into all she could find about the Corrupted pair. She toiled away in the library with the gryphon at her side, shuffling between books and articles for whatever might help to broaden her limited understanding about what threatened this organisation. Once she felt reasonably satisfied with what she’d found pertaining to the twins, she sought to shift her attention to learning more about the wraith of Atlantis, and to this mysterious winged Corrupted.

  When it came to the wraith of Atlantis, she couldn’t help but dwell on all those terrified glances shared between the organisation’s operatives, with any mention of its true name. She wondered why they were so afraid of him. Certainly the images depicting of him in what few texts she found, or the haunting figure she’d once seen in her dreams, were sufficient to establish why such a being might be feared. But she believed the calibre of those operatives in service to this organisation were not the kind of people to be scared off by a mere illustration.

  As she read more about Namtar, she spent more time focusing on the histories of Seth. It didn’t take her long to become entirely immersed in the mythology surrounding this god of chaos: his succession in the underworld after killing and disposing of Osiris, his position in defence of Ra the sun god, aboard his night barque, his seemingly endless conflict with Horus, and his eventual demonization. The more she thought about it, the more she began to conclude that there were noticeable similarities between Seth and this Namtar. If Namtar truly was the lord of shadows, it was curious that the wraith of Atlantis also shared Seth’s element.

  “Katherine,” she heard Walter boom, as he rolled into the library accompanied by a number of operatives. “You and Anzu are to follow me.”

  “What’s happened?” She asked, nervous that she might have done something wrong being here in the library.

  “Quickly now, I haven’t time to explain,” Walter responded, as they marched back along the hallway.

  After many twists and turns through the underground facility, she eventually found herself in the projects’ vehicle bay. Predictably, and wondering at her misfortune, a sombre Blake and Kulullu already sat inside the same utility she was directed to. But at least Lance was also present, and for that she was thankful.

  In the utility, and heading out through the tunnel, she asked why they’d suddenly been ordered to mobilize. But what she then learned was more distressing than she’d dare to admit.

  “It was Justin, he’s Namtar’s Indigo,” Lance told her. “He, and the same two Corrupted who attacked you and Anzu, has taken both the Senator and Monica as captives.”

  “What about Officer’s Harkin and Spears?”

  “They let them and I go free…, he replied. “But there’s no telling what they’ll do with Monica and the Senator…”

  It was at this moment she felt that her worst fear had been realized. For she could think of no logical reason that Lance would lie, and now she knew the organization’s suspicions had proven true. Feelings of guilt soon followed, as she toiled with this notion that had she been there, perhaps she could have made a difference. She thought that if she’d been allowed to accompany them, she might have been able to get through to Justin, and made him see the folly in associating with such a wretched creature. But as they drew nearer to the city, she felt that Justin had played her for a fool. This young man had come into her life, seduced her to fall for his good looks, and had then colluded with those who had brought about her father’s untimely demise. She didn’t know if he was the instigator, or just another of Namtar’s followers, but she now came to expect the worst.

  “Head for Anabasis High,” Walter’s voice echoed through the vehicle’s interior. “We will assemble outside the school grounds.”

  “Why there?” She asked Lance.

  He looked back at her apprehensively. “That is where he told us we’d find them.”

  “So we’re walking directly into a trap,” Blake responded, in his usual obnoxious and bragging manner.

  She wondered if Blake had ever experienced what it felt like to be afraid. Or if he’d ever become aware of his own superiority complex. But she wasn’t entirely sure if he was capable of feeling anything.

  For Katherine, it seemed like an eternity to reach Anabasis High. During this time, she thought about how much had changed in the space of a few days, and about how her feelings of devotion for Justin were now slowly being replaced with spite. The more she thought about it, the angrier she felt. Regardless of the supposed hypocrisy in doing so, she decided to try and pry within Anzu’s thoughts, hoping to find some insight into how he’d dealt with such pent-up feelings. For she remembered that he too had lost his mother to the Corrupted, and surely he’d have some experience with how one should approach such strong emotions.

  “There is no easy answer, but we cannot allow any feelings to cloud our own judgment,” the guardian had told her, his golden eyes fixed on her own. “I believe it’s necessary to think on such things with clarity. What’s most important is that we save Monica and the Senator.”

  With the utility drawing closer to Anabasis High, she watched as the other’s prepared thoroughly in anticipation of what
appeared to be an inevitable, looming conflict. They armed themselves; fastening protective armour, strapping ammunition chains across their torso’s, pocketing plasma grenades, and loading the cartridge chambers of their revolvers.

  “Lance, is there any way I could receive some last minute training on how to use this equipment?” She questioned, hoping to also better prepare herself for what might unfold.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” he asserted, as he busily readied himself for what awaited. “We don’t expect you to use any of the equipment at this early stage of your training.”

  “Honestly, I won’t be using any of it if I can help it. But I’ve seen what those grenades in particular can do, and I don’t want to go up against any Corrupted at a disadvantage.”

  Blake frowned. “Plasma grenades are not a toy. And any training is going to take longer than the little time we have left.”

  With her proposition failing to sway Lance, and also knowing that in this case Blake was probably right, she’d little choice but to make do with what she had already come to learn.

  Once the utility had come to a halt, and had pulled up outside the school’s grounds, all the operatives poured out and moved to secure the school’s perimeter. As both she and Anzu slowly sought to exit, she noticed Walter roll up toward the back of the utility.

  “Blake and Kulullu, this is the moment we’ve anticipated would one day arrive,” he proceeded to address them, the pair having left the utility only moments prior to both Katherine and Anzu.

  “All the countless hours of study, the rigorous training sessions, and the many sleepless nights in deep meditation,” he continued. “All of it has led to this point. You must do what the founding members of the ‘Project’ could not, and rid the world of all Corrupted. Our future is in your hands.”

  Blake and Kulullu simply nodded in response. She looked on as they hurried in pursuit of the other operatives who had already made their way across the school’s grounds, and toward the blocks of classrooms.