“There will be time enough for explanations,” Kayla said. “Just tell me that you still love me, and nothing else will matter.”
Ishan’s hesitation was a knife in her heart. Had her resurrection been too much for him? Had her lies and use of sciencecraft hardened his heart against her, as his religion and the commands of the Founder required?
“I still love you,” he said.
Kayla hugged him with joy, and all worries vanished. Her nanobots could alter her appearance, and they could be married. None from the Outside could breach the Wall. Here, she was free from the genocidal destiny her maker intended for her. Let the Rogues and humans consummate their suicide pact and prove the Founder correct. She had Ishan—that was enough.
An ebony-skinned woman in a white headscarf emerged from the hut, her face troubled. “Ishan, I think Ania is …” She froze at the sight of a stranger.
Ishan disengaged from Kayla’s embrace. “This is Sakinah,” he said. “She is my wife.”
Sakinah inclined her head stiffly.
Ishan’s wife? Kayla staggered back slightly, and Ishan took hold of her arm to steady her.
“This is Kayla.” Ishan looked at Kayla with a plea. “Kayla’s father was a Christian healer from the South who once saved my life.”
Sakinah drew in a breath, and her eyes glowed with hope. “Then she’s here to cure Ania? Allah be praised, and thank you for coming!”
Ishan has a child.
Kayla’s heart sank. Had Ishan’s father forced him to marry? No, I won’t let this woman take him from me. Suppose Ishan’s wife had a fatal brain aneurism a month from now, when Kayla was far away? A few nanobots could accomplish such a thing without anyone the wiser. Ishan had rescued her, wasn’t it right that she rescue him now? Didn’t they both deserve happiness after all they’d been through?
Sakinah grasped Kayla’s hand and led her inside. “Please—my daughter … she’s dying.”
Little Ania struggled for breath and seemed near death. Only a few moths old, the child looked malnourished, as did her parents, but that didn’t explain the bluish tint of her skin or the ragged breathing heaving in choking gasps. Kayla opened one of the child’s eyelids, and the whites were blood red. Subconjunctival hemorrhages.
“Can you help her?” Sakinah spoke in Arabic, her face tortured.
Kayla placed her hand on the child’s forehead, and nanobots flowed into the girl’s body.
She examined the child’s DNA, which seemed normal. Next, her nanos searched for a harmful virus or bacteria and soon found the culprit, confirmed an instant later when Ania’s lungs erupted in a series of ragged coughs.
Kayla spoke in Arabic. “She has a severe case of Whooping Cough, which has caused other issues, the most serious being pneumothorax, which is starving her body of oxygen. If untreated, she will be dead in a couple of days.”
“Can you save her?” Sakinah flushed and placed a hand over her heart.
“I can. But it involves the use of sciencecraft.” She could have simply healed the child without telling them. They’d consider it a miracle from Allah.
Or am I hoping she will let her child die? Would that be the justification I needed to kill her?
Sakinah placed her hands over her heart as she looked from Ishan to her dying child. “Would you despise me if I allowed sciencecraft to heal our child?”
Ishan stiffened. “Sciencecraft is forbidden.”
Had she miscalculated? What if it was Ishan who let his daughter die rather than disobey the Founder’s law?
Sakinah placed a hand against his cheek and gazed up at Ishan. “Maybe this is the method Allah has chosen to heal our child.”
Ishan’s face softened. He looked toward his dying child and then back at his wife. Finally, he nodded and kissed his wife’s forehead. “I would sacrifice even my immortal soul for Ania or you.”
Kayla’s heart broke. He loves her.
Sakinah turned to Kayla and nodded. “Do whatever you have to.”
I could never kill her now.
Kayla placed her hand on Ania’s forehead once again. She relayed her instructions to the nanobots inside the child’s body. Some created antibodies to search and destroy the Whooping Cough bacteria, while others drained the excess gas in the pleural space of the chest wall, treated the secondary pneumonia, repaired the cracked ribs, and cleared the hemorrhages within her eyes.
Fifteen minutes later, the baby’s breathing eased, and her color returned to normal as oxygen levels rose in her bloodstream.
“In a few days, you won’t know she was ever sick,” Kayla said.
Sakinah caressed Ania’s peaceful face, then turned to Kayla. “You are the angel I prayed to Allah for.” Sakinah fell to her knees and prostrated herself as if worshiping a deity.
Kayla gently pulled her to her feet. “I am repaying a kindness your husband once did me.”
When Sakinah returned to her child’s side, Kayla followed Ishan out of the hut.
“It seems I am too late,” she whispered.
“Kayla, I wish—”
“I know.” She looked away from him.
Ishan placed a hesitant hand on her shoulder and asked, “You’re not a demon?”
“You married Sakinah before my trial, didn’t you?” Kayla asked.
“Yes.” Ishan looked away. “I wanted to put the past behind me.”
“You love her?”
Ishan nodded. “But not the way I love you.”
Ishan embraced her with a tragic fierceness. “Allah must have had some reason …”
Kayla kissed him. His lips pressed against hers like a farewell to her final hope for happiness. Had God really orchestrated it all? What purpose could keeping them apart serve?
“Goodbye, my love.” She rose into the sky with the ease of a feather on the wind.
Ishan’s eyes widened. “May Allah preserve your soul.”
When he receded to little more than a speck, Kayla gained speed and flew to the south.
Puck’s nose peeked out of her pocket, sniffed the wind, and returned to his nap.
The wind stole each tear the instant it emerged. Did I really expect to live happily ever after with Ishan like nothing had happened? To escape the fate God has ordained? Her sobs transformed to maniacal laughter. Bitterness expanded inside her until every cell demanded a target for its rage. Her destination stretched before her like a blood-trail.
The abomination of Science-Magic flashed across the moonlit sky and shrieked with the force beyond the capacity of ordinary human lungs. “I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy!”
And with these words of Moses echoing through the night sky like a sonic boom, the exile flew as an Angel of Death on the wings of science, carried swifter than the wind toward enemies deserving of her vengeance. She flew south toward the village that had birthed, burned, and banished her.
Nihala the Destroyer was returning home.
As the sun topped the eastern horizon, Kayla recognized places she’d ridden with Ishan. By now, the fields of wheat and corn should teem with farmers waging the never-ending battle against weeds, crows, and a thousand other blights. But they lay empty. Had her vengeance been usurped by war or disease?
The dour toll of a bell echoed across the landscape.
It’s Sunday morning!
Church attendance was mandatory in the settlement. A smile twisted the edges of Kayla’s mouth at the timing.
Kayla landed in front of the little church. Behind the closed doors, the congregation sang “A Mighty Fortress.” Composed by Martin Luther himself, she’d sung it a hundred times in the belief that God would protect her from Satan and the outside world.
“And though this world, with devils filled,
Should threaten to undo us,
We will not fear, for God hath willed
His truth to triumph through us:
We tremble not for him;
His rage we can endure
For lo! his doom is sure,
One little word shall fell him.”
Kayla extended her vision into the church as the townsfolk took their seats. Their faces radiated hope and community—unlike the hungry anticipation they’d worn as they watched her and the monk burn.
In contrast to their immortal cousins in orbit around the moon, death, disease, and aging stalked them every day of their short lives. Yet they seemed happier than those in Ixtalia. Was the Founder right? Were humans simply unsuited to technology?
Elias sat in the front row. The stump of his right arm protruded from the rolled-up sleeve of his shirt. Hannah sat beside him, her simple wedding ring visible as she cradled a bundled newborn to her chest with one hand. Elias glanced at Hannah and smiled, the love between them apparent.
He became a cripple and gained happiness. I was made whole and gained despair.
Kayla’s fists tightened as Minister Coglin took his place before the altar. He glared at the congregation with his cold judgment, and many trembled before his gaze.
“Are you listening to what the Word of the Lord commands you?” he shouted. “The smallest lie is an abomination to the Lord, whose perfection abhors such dirty rags in his presence! And what is your punishment for your sins?”
The minister opened his Bible and read, “And the Devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, where the beast and the false prophet are, and shall be tormented day and night forever and ever!”
Minister Coglin surveyed the fearful faces of his flock and paused, letting the words sink in. As he drew breath to spew more fire and brimstone, wind blasted the church doors open. A death-like stillness enshrouded the gathering as every face turned.
With lazy deliberation, Kayla lowered her hood, and a collective gasp spread through the church.
“I command you gone, Spawn of Satan!” Minister Coglin shouted, holding his Bible and a wooden cross before him as magic talismans.
Kayla smiled, the red glow in her eyes adding to the terror in the faces of her tormentors.
“This ground is sacred and has been sanctified by the Lord our God,” the minister declared. “He will strike you down in divine retribution should you enter His house!”
“Your warning is quite specific,” Kayla said. “Shall we conduct an experiment to test this prediction of yours?” Kayla took a step into the church and cringed in exaggerated fear at the impending wrath of God. Then her face hardened. “It seems your hypothesis has proven false.”
“You mock the Word of the Lord at your peril!” Minister Coglin raised the Bible and cross higher. “Begone, bastard spawn of a whore!”
A few nanobots entered his body and delivered a jolt of electricity to his heart. The minister dropped the Bible, and his hand gripped his chest.
Kayla strode forward as data flowed from her nanos into her mind, analyzing his health, DNA, and a thousand other components that might be useful.
“She is the spawn of the Devil,” Minister Coglin gasped. “I order her destroyed this instant!”
A few of the men stood and started for her. Kayla waved her hand, and they flew backward into the wooden walls. A gratifying terror bloomed in the faces around her.
Minister Coglin’s eyes bulged as she neared. “Witch! Sorcerer!”
Kayla jerked to a halt halfway down the central aisle.
It can’t be.
Emboldened, the minister pointed his cross and shouted the words God spoke to Moses, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live!”
The axe twirled through the air like a gleaming propeller—and stopped inches from the back of her skull. Kayla turned and looked at the razor-sharp edge.
“A good throw,” she said to Matthew, who stood glaring at her from the middle of one of the pews. It wasn’t odd that Suzy’s father would bring an axe to church, since many of the men kept weapons handy in case raiders used Sunday to catch the town off guard.
She could have stopped him beforehand, but this offered a more dramatic demonstration. She was staging a morality play, after all—one with an undetermined ending. But what passion play would be complete without blood?
With a thought, she sent the levitating weapon spinning back the way it had come. Matthew threw his arm across his face, but the axe disintegrated into a thousand pieces as it reached him.
A deathly silence filled the room. Even the smallest child sat like a terrified statue.
Kayla continued toward Minister Coglin.
Elias rose from his seat and stepped in front of her, his face oddly calm. “I’m the one who wronged you,” he said. “Punish me, but I will not allow you to harm my father.”
“And how will you stop me … brother?”
His brow furrowed in confusion, “I don’t understand …”
Kayla looked back at Minister Coglin. “Or should I say, half brother?”
The minister’s face went white at the words.
Impossible as it seemed, half of her DNA came from the minister. Which made Elias her half brother.
“I see that you know the truth,” Kayla said to the minister. “You called my mother a whore. What does that make you … Father?”
Shock crept into the fear on the faces of her audience.
“Lies!” the minister roared. “The tricks of Lucifer!”
A cyclone of anger released inside her. Her skin darkened, and the glowing symbols burned to the surface. Shouts of terror rose from the congregation as they surged for the doors, only to have them slam in unison with booming finality. The oaken portals stood as immovable as the gates of Hell as people threw themselves against them.
Elias stumbled back, and Hannah ran to him, their child grasped in her arms.
Minister Coglin fled toward the rear exit, but Kayla seized him with her nanos and jerked his body backward. “Do you remember long ago in Bible class when you told us children that the greatest proof of the resurrection was the martyrdom of the apostles?”
The minister remained silent, and she gave his heart a squeeze. His entire body stiffened. “I remember, I remember!”
“You said that many of the apostles chose horrible deaths rather than recant their witness of the resurrection. Your exact words were, ‘Who would die for a lie?’ Do you remember saying that?”
“Yes.”
Kayla’s smile widened, her eyes burning. “Shall we test your theory?”
New cries of terror erupted from the imprisoned villagers as their minister ascended into the air. Half a dozen pews broke into pieces and piled themselves atop the altar beneath him.
“I will put you to the Question, as the church Inquisitors used to call it.” Kayla’s smile vanished. “I ask you again—are you my father?”
“No!” the minister shrieked. “I swear it wasn’t me!”
“I already know the truth,” Kayla said. “You cannot fool me with your lies, but I want them to hear your confession.”
The wood burst into flames, and the screams of the congregants intensified as their man of God drifted toward the fire. Minister Coglin’s screams of agony soon rose above all the rest.
The monk’s calm acceptance of death within the flames had been saintlike. Would her real father prove as resolute?
As his graying hair smoked in warning, the minister shouted his confession. “Yes, I committed the sin of fornication with Elaine Nighthawk—I am your father!”
Elias fell to his knees and vomited. A new horror filled the faces of the congregants as they stared at the minister.
The flames vanished, and the doors of the church exploded open. Every member of the congregation fled, except Elias.
“Please,” Elias said, his voice quavering. “I’m sorry for what we’ve both done to you, but please don’t kill him.”
“Noble of you to stand by our father,” she said. “Once I’ve finished with him, I have a few questions f
or you, as well. I hope you have been good during my absence—for your sake.”
Chapter 36
Tendrils of smoke swirled past the suspended body of the minster and drifted toward the rough-hewn rafters like departed souls seeking a pathway to Heaven.
Anger drained from Kayla like a ruptured water skin. She slumped onto the dirt floor and crossed her legs. The symbols on her skin lost some of their glow, but did not vanish completely.
Minister Coglin drifted down from the desecrated alter and fell in a heap before her. Soot stained his face to match his singed clothing. Coughs tore through his lungs as he hacked up black phlegm. Elias stood frozen, his face tormented.
“Your theory seems correct,” Kayla said to her father. “You, at least, chose not to die for a lie. Of course, your assertion that the apostles martyred themselves rather than recant the resurrection of Jesus is based on nothing more than church traditions centuries after the fact. They are secondhand stories at best, like the Gospels themselves.”
“Blasphemer,” Minister Coglin said weakly. “Kill me and get it over with, demon.”
“First, I want the story of what occurred between you and my mother.”
Minister Coglin struggled to his feet and swayed. “I confessed the truth, not to you, but to God. You are God’s punishment for my sin, and I’ll suffer the consequences, knowing that Jesus has cleansed me of my mistakes. As to your mother, she received her punishment when you killed her at your birth, and I will say nothing to you about her.”
A million nanobots flung him to his knees before her, and Kayla placed the palm of her hand on his forehead.
“No!” Elias shouted and stepped forward. Her half brother jerked to a halt, his muscles straining against the invisible force imprisoning him.
Memories flowed from father to daughter in a torrent—an inheritance of sin, shame, and tragedy.
From earliest childhood, Mark Coglin’s intelligence set him apart. By the age of ten he’d read the Bible twice and could recite much of it from memory. The town’s aging preacher had taken the gifted boy under his wing, recognizing that God had blessed him with talents too valuable to waste in the fields of his father. The boy accompanied the minister on his annual road-tour revivals and became a sensation. Everyone loved watching the fresh-faced youth preaching Hell and Brimstone, but his ability to heal the sick through prayer and the laying on of hands was even more extraordinary.
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