by Jinn, Bo
C. 5: Day 692
That moment the scarred seal appeared, he was overcome by that most familiar sense that he should wake up any second, for this must have been a dream more real and more vexing than any other. But the hermit remained before him, still and silent. It was no dream.
Every chronometer across the martial world blinked back to 0000.
When the pale hand drew the collar back over the seal, he looked back up at the flashing blanks of the hermit’s eyes. He was never disposed to fear, but this new feeling which overcame him was something far more profound than mere terror. All of his former interest as to who the man was died away, and in its place, came a new, more fearful question:
“Why are we here?”
“Another fine question,” hummed the hermit. In keeping with his habit, a period of silence preceded his answer, which was another question: “Tell me, Saul Vartanian … Do you know what Providence is?”
“No…”
“It is not entirely unlike what you would call ‘fate.’”
“I do not believe in fate.”
“Why not?”
“Because it vindicates everything that people do.”
The hermit bowed his head.
“That’s right … Good.”
“What is good?” he asked.
“Ah … Now, that is the finest question of all.”
A sharp blow and rumble of thunder perturbed the still-burning flame ever so slightly.
“Providence,” the hermit continued, “is also a vindicator. With one crucial difference.”
“What is that?” he asked.
“Fate preserves the strong. Providence preserves the good. Of course, to preserve the good does not necessitate a bloodless path. No … To preserve one thing is to destroy another. You should know by now; that is the ultimate rule.” The hermit leaned forward until his face was just over the flame and laid his hands flat on the table. “I believe that Providence is what brought Naomi to you. I believe it is the reason you and I are sitting here right now.”
Every time the hermit spoke, Saul found himself having to stop to decrypt his words.
“What reason?” he asked.
“That,” the hermit replied, “cannot be known until it has come to pass. It is the way of things.”
“What good is there believing in reasons you cannot know?”
“All the good in the world, of course,” the hermit answered with a transitory smile. “But I don’t expect you to understand that. No. Not yet…”
A number of theories flashed through Saul’s mind with regard to the hermit – not least among them; the theory that he was nothing more than a very lucid madman. However, the strongest possibility presently nurturing his misgiving was that he was, for some as yet unknown purpose, in collusion with the Commission. He grew restless. Who was this man and what did he want?
“You wanted to know why we are here.”
He affirmed the hermit’s statement with his silence.
“You are here because you see the truth,” said the hermit. “The truth is that the world is lost and does not know it. But, you know it. How you know it, you cannot justify. It is like a sense to which the consciousness of the world has been dulled: That voice … that only you can hear. And, so, you are forced to watch them stumble in a blind stupor, chasing illusions, abolishing themselves from the inside out by gradual degrees until one day there will be nothing left in the world but the final culmination of the soul: an endless cycle of fire and ash … and that lone, wailing voice in the wilderness.” The hermit’s voice became lower and graver with each word. “You see it … don’t you? You see it every day.”
As the hermit spoke, he could hear the voices of his nightmares screaming.
“Yes,” he gasped.
“I see it too,” the hermit answered, drawing away from the candlelight. “You are here because you have felt that fire scorch for a long, long time. Even now, it burns you. I can see it in your eyes. You are here because she is the only thing that can take the pain away…”
“And why are you here?” he rumbled.
At this question, the hermit bowed his head and the shadows extended over his eyes.
“I am here to tell you that it is time … for you to let her go.”
All the suspicion that had been mounting flared up inside him at once, and the flash of sudden wrath bore itself in a fierce frown. He got up from his seat, nearly sending the chair tumbling, and stepped up to the door while the hermit remained calmly seated. He pulled sideways on the handle but the door wouldn’t give. He pulled again, sharply, and again.
“Open this door.”
“Not until we are finished.”
He turned and drew the blade.
“Open – it.”
The blade edge shook an inch from the hermit’s face.
“If you must kill me, then, so be it,” the hermit sighed, wearily. “But you should know that there is a very particular way to open that door, and it would be far more expedient for you to spare my life – at least, until we are done … The alternative, of course, is that we both die in this room.”
His fury had risen to the point where he would have certainly slashed the hermit’s throat. The shaking blade yielded to reason, and the terse, feral breaths stifled with his rage. He slowly put away the blade and lowered back into the seat, averting the hermit’s eyes for fear of having his indignation roused beyond control.
“It does not matter who you are,” he said, after a long silence. “I will not let you take her.”
The hermit maintained his piercing gaze as he leaned forward into the candlelight.
“Do you love her?”
The question was abrupt and unexpected. He looked up and was sucked back into the black holes of the hermit’s eyes.
“What?” he muttered.
“Naomi … Do you love her?”
It was a question he had only vaguely considered. And the more he’d considered it, the more he was convinced that he did. Now that the question was being put to him in this way, and by this man, for some unknown reason he found himself unable to answer.
“I would die for her,” he whispered.
“Of course, you would; your life would be worth nothing without her. That is not what I asked.”
“Then I do not know how to answer your question.”
“Very well … then I shall ask you another question.” The hermit reclined again. “Suppose she was the one who wanted to leave you – to leave this place,” he said. “What would you do?”
The question brought him to the edge of the abyss. He dared not answer. He knew the answer. And that is exactly why he would not say it. He didn’t have to. The hermit knew. He could tell by that convicting look in his eyes … he knew that he would not allow it to happen.
The hermit lowered his eyes
“You need her,” he murmured, “but you do not love her. As soon as she causes you pain, you will hate her more than anything else in the world. It is in your nature.”
“You do not know me.”
“I don’t have to,” the hermit replied, slowly shaking his head. “Do you realise where you are?”
His eyes wandered uncertainly about the surrounding darkness while the hermit’s gaze was straight, true and unwavering.
“I know that you’ve asked yourself the question before: What kind of man could possibly choose a place like this. But, we did. You did. Have you ever asked yourself why?”
“It does not matter,” he replied sharply.
“The past does not matter?}
“The past is dead,” he averred.
“To your mind, perhaps,” said the hermit, shaking his head once more. “The soul never forgets. Never. And until your mind remembers, your soul will never find respite. The nightmare will not stop. It is the same for everyone who chooses this place.”
“You chose this place too,” he rejoined.
The hermit nodded.
“I have been here since the beginni
ng,” he said.
“So what makes you any different than me?”
At this, the hermit’s eyes lowered with an aspect of sorrow.
“I know where your path with her ends.”
He lifted his sullen gaze again and the candle flames dilated to sparkles.
“Naomi loves you, Saul … She loves you in a way that neither you nor I can truly understand – in a way that only someone like her is capable of loving. But because of who she is, a world like ours can only destroy her. And because of what you are, her love will cause you pain unlike anything you have ever felt before, leaving only two possibilities: Either she will destroy you … or you will destroy her.”
The warning was one he had heard before – though not in quite the same words. He had not believed it then, but now the horrid doubt started to creep in, through the omniscient eyes of this strange old hermit.
“Why are you telling me this?” he murmured.
The hermit held a sombre silence which went uninterrupted. When the silence endured to a point that it became clear that the conversation was over, the hermit took the candle, stood from his chair and stepped up to the door. He drew a finger over the door seam and stopped just before the middle, then dragged the finger two inches to the right and pulled his hand back in a fist. With one sharp thump, the lock clicked and the door slid open.
“Come,” he beckoned, floating through the door.
After a moment of hesitation, Saul stood up and followed back through the narrow, candlelit corridor and up the stairs. The hermit stopped outside the closed door at the top, opened it and stepped aside, candle in hand. Inside, the pale street lights shone in through the window onto a bed with a small bulge in the middle.
The hermit held out the candle, and Saul regarded him skeptically as he took it. He edged across the threshold into the room. As he came nearer to the bed, tassels of blonde locks came within the reaches of the candlelight.
“Naomi…”
“You should not wake her,” warned the hermit with a grim look.
Ignoring the warning, he inaudibly approached the head of the bed. The little head appeared over the line of the quilt and he knelt down and brought the candlelight closer. It was her. The first sight of her kindled the long lost warmth in his soul.
“Naomi.”
Her eyes were closed. Her breaths were long and wheezing and more strained than usual and her skin became sallower and sallower under the candlelight. A narrow slit appeared between the dreary little eyelids, and the little moonstones peered through. A whisper effervesced off the small, pale lips. He brushed the hair from over her eyes and cupped his palm over the side of her face. Her skin was cold, her eyes strained to see, and for a while she was silent; breathing long, heavy breaths.
“I am here, little one.” he said.
“S … Sa….”
Her voice suddenly broke and her eyes widened. She began to cough, loud rasping, guttering coughs, turning her face to the side and burying her face into the sheets. He almost dropped the candle as he moved to cradle her jerking little head.
She coughed more harshly than ever before. After a while, the coughs tempered to a strained, lung-shot wheeze and when the little head leaned back onto the pillow, he saw a rust-coloured stain on her lips. The same stain was on his fingers. He lifted back the sheet, and it was stained red – with blood.
Naomi’s eyes shut again. She reclined and passed out.
“What have you done to her?” he snarled, turning menacingly toward the hermit.
“I have not done anything…”
He rushed forward and seizing the hermit by the collar of his robe and thrusting him up with a bang against the door, snarled: “WHAT HAPPENED TO HER!”
His shaking fists pressed against the hermit’s chest and his eyes bulged madly from their sockets. The hermit stared back into the mad, persecuted eyes, and with an air of sincerest sorrow, muttered: “It’s cancer.”
Saul’s chest stopped heaving mid-breath.
The hermit lowered his eyes.
“It is in her lungs.”
He searched the depths of the hermit’s gaze for any glimmer of a lie. It had to be a lie. Then, the memories summoned up; nights when he would wake with her coughs and shivers, the chronic illness, her loss of colour. His fists allayed. He staggered back to the bedside and fell to his knees.
“No…”
“She took a turn for the worse a few days ago.”
“Treatment,” he mumbled. “She can get treatment…”
“Treatment costs money. Money I don’t have.”
He fell silent again and looked away.
“Do you…?”
“No,” he muttered. “They took everything.”
The hail beat against the windows and the thunder broke the heavens again. The defenceless little head trembled in his arms.
“She is… dying,” he gasped in disbelief.
“Yes.”
“No,” his voice trembled. He touched his forehead against hers.
“She doesn’t have much time.”
“Not like this.” He felt her skin cold in the palms of his hands as he cupped them around her pale face, trying to imbibe his own life into her. “…Not like this.”
He would give his own life. He would give anything – do anything. Any pain but this.
It could not end like this.
Several days of unrest in the South Bolivian Republic finally led to a Council resolution the previous day declaring the former Plurinational State an enemy of the UMC. The sharp rise in martial demand sent a plethora of fresh calls for tenders through West Wing, and contract brokers in the Vanguard were on full alert, vying to secure the best deals with the PMCs. Commissioner Eastman had been drawing up the final clauses on one of the many bulk contracts that had gone through his office that day, when the door suddenly opened.
By the time he looked up, the entrant was already seated across from him.
“Martial Vartanian,” the commissioner greeted with a nod. “Welcome back.”
His reply to the greeting was a glare as grim a death.
“I need money.”
The commissioner’s eyes dilated. His hands slowly withdrew and the illuminated touchboard dissipated from the crystal surface of his desk.
“How much?” he asked.
Saul reached into his inner pockets, took out a folded piece of paper and laid it on the desk. The seal of the Commission Medical Branch was on the back. Eastman eyed the piece of paper with interest before leaning forward. He unfolded the paper, took a long look and gently laid it back down on the desk.
“That is a lot,” he said, frankly.
“I need it.”
The commissioner nodded.
“Very well … You know what you have to do.” Eastman straightened up in his seat. His hand disappeared beneath the desktop and when it reappeared, it was holding a thin, red file with the seal of the Vanguard on the front. “The contract just opened up,” he said, laying the file on the desk. “The assignment is in thirty days.”
“I need the money now,” he rumbled.
“We’ll request an advance from the PMC.”
Eastman’s eyes gazed over his laced fingers.
Saul turned his glare from the commissioner to the bright red file sitting on the desk. He knew that hard copies of martial contracts were kept in a separate room, which meant that he must have selected the assignment in advance. He slowly picked up the file and opened it. He did not have to read past the first lines of the first page for his suspicion to rouse anew.
“The mission location,” said Eastman, “is one I believe you are familiar with…”
His eyes centered on a single word, in bold lettering, on the top of the page:
“KAMCHATKA”
C. 5: Day 743
The alarm went off at 0900: four short bleeps and a brief pause recurring.
He sat up and brought his legs over the side of his bed, scouring his eyes with the back of his wri
st. For a while he stared blankly at the clouded sky with the ringing alarm in the background. In the corner of the room, the computer display still showed the threads of correspondence from the previous days. When he recalled what day it was, he heaved a sigh, rose from the bed and breasted the sunbeams with due ambivalence. The alarm switched off. He picked up his cell and the display lit up. A flashing notice intimated that the email he had been expecting from the Commission had arrived. The heading read:
“Tenancy Expiration – Notice of Eviction”
He pressed the “Delete” button, dropped the cell on the table and entered the en suite.
As the water poured over his face, he mulled over his own soul, as most do who stare down death. This newfound anxiety was the strangest feeling of all. Death, it seems, only perturbs insofar as life is worth living. Hope breathed fresh fear into him. It was not that he did not want to die so much as he felt obligated to live. For Naomi’s sake, and her sake alone, he was committed to life. The water stopped running.
He dried off and got dressed.
He picked up a small stack of papers on the lounge table on his way out and, after a fleeting glance, folded the papers and tucked them into his coat. He stood in the middle of the hall, looking around the house, each corner rousing a different memory which replayed before his eyes, and as he walked out the front door, his last thought was that something – some insubstantial thing – had been forever imparted to those walls.
The door shut.
Hands pocketed and head low, Saul Vartanian walked amid the foot traffic down the sidewalk. Dawn had not yet broken. A low-passing airship cast its light over the whole street and a row of passing autocabs sent the tail of his coat swaying in a dusty breeze. He passed a dreg in one of the narrow alleys off 5th Street, huddled up by a trash container, likely dead, but he did not stop to check. Sodom Sanitation would pass soon…
He stepped up to the door of “Number 1, Block 8,” knocked three times, paused, and then two more knocks, as the hermit had instructed (for reasons Saul did not ask him to specify, being no stranger to caution himself).