by J. Stone
Culling the street of the living dead, Alice made her way toward the Sovereign Tower, where she expected the only conscious Arkmast resided. With Mary Elizabeth comatose from the infection, her daughter, Viola, was currently in charge of the empire, and Alice intended to see that she was protected. The chaos only seemed to grow, as she made her way ever closer to her goal. The tower was positioned perfectly at the center of Cultwick, and it seemed to serve as a beacon for the mindless corpses ravaging the citizenry. She saved all who she could, but she knew countless others had fallen to their horrible infection.
When Alice was finally able to see the base of the tower, she could see that there was some commotion taking place there. The remaining soldiers of the corps had assembled and were surrounding the stage just outside the tower’s doors. They formed a perimeter, guarding something or someone. Alice was too far away to see more. Instead, she heard the loudspeakers scattered throughout the city begin to crackle in preparation for a message. A voice echoed out from the various devices positioned throughout the city with an announcement regarding the infection.
The unstable and violent woman, Fiona, had been collected and bound. A reference was made to her being present on the stage, but Alice was still too far to see the scene clearly. She rushed forward, past the feral corpses, slicing through all those who dared approach her. If Fiona truly was captured, Alice intended to witness the only course of action the regent-empress could take.
She didn’t seem to notice, but as she moved closer to the Sovereign Tower, her stitching became looser. The skin tugged away at the sections that they had been sewed into, causing her an increasing amount of pain. Alice pushed it away and pressed forward.
Both Viola and Fiona were now plainly visible to the operative, and she found herself quite pleased by the turn of events. The woman who had become known as the Carrier seemed to be heavily sedated and groggy. She could barely lift her head, and the rest of her body was restrained in a metal chair at the center of the stage. Viola approached the center of the stage as well, with a silver dagger in hand.
Alice was unsure what the regent-empress was up to, but Viola slid the blade across her own palm before doing the same to Fiona. She then gripped her hand with Fiona’s, allowing their open cuts to touch and blood to flow together. The regent-empress’ eyes closed, and Alice could see her muttering something indiscernible.
An eerie silence suddenly overcame the city, with all of the animated cadavers coming to an unexplainable stop. A crimson bolt of lightning pierced the sky overhead. The burst of light came crashing down and made contact with one of the feral infected before splitting off in a dozen different directions all at once. Each branch streaked and tore through the infected bodies, seemingly destroying all presence of the infection and their animation. Alice was not immune to the bolt, as it ripped through her as well. Only an instant passed, but she endured what she feared would be an unending pain from the blast of red light. When it finally seemed to finish with her, Alice collapsed not far from the Sovereign Tower and watched as Viola stood in front of a microphone to deliver a speech. Alice struggled to stay conscious despite the ever-present pain from her stitching and now the lightning bolt.
“Citizens of Cultwick,” the regent-empress began. “The threat of the Carrier Plague is at an end. I have personally seen to it, and I did so not through the tainted science of biosynthesis, but through the cleansing power of Vaseevoo!”
Alice could barely believe her own ears. That an Arkmast could possibly denounce biosynthesis was one thing, but to hold up the heathen practice of Vaseevoo in the same sentence was simply ludicrous. Viola had certainly always been a sight different than her mother, but Alice found it hard to take that she had drifted so far away from the empire’s foundations.
Viola continued, “I know most of you have been brought up to believe in only one religion, but I promise that during my reign, I will ensure the Cultwick Empire becomes a more enlightened and inclusive place to live. In that vein, I’m afraid I have a sad announcement to make. My mother has succumbed to her wounds and passed. As such, I must take up her mantle, and subsequently, I have a series of proclamations to make in regards to her reign and what will ultimately become mine.”
Again, Alice was taken aback. Struggling to stay in one piece, both mentally and physically, the operative tried to process this new information. The empress had ruled for many years, at first with her husband, and after his death, on her own. Alice had served her for nearly the whole of her career as an operative, and the changing of empresses seemed to border on surreal. She wondered if things would have turned out differently if she hadn’t perished beneath the train. If she had been alive, could she have protected the empress from this demise? Her world seemed to have nearly shattered with Viola’s announcement, but there was more to come from the new empress.
“The horrors of the Sweeper Bot Plague and now the Carrier Plague have ravaged this empire for far too long. Going forward, the Church of Biosynthesis and its members will have less say in the way our government is run. I hereby announce that henceforth, the lottery has ended and all lottery winners will be freed. I will not have another Fiona Newton created on my watch. I also hereby issue a formal pardon to Erynn Clover, the woman who will no longer be known as a heretic. I believe her rights were monstrously violated when she was collected for the lottery and vilified by a government that had lost sight of its intentions. Her pardon shall serve as the symbolic end of the control the Church of Biosynthesis has over Cultwick.”
Alice was floored. Had her struggles to recapture the heretic meant nothing? She believed Erynn Clover to be a dangerous entity, whether Viola was prepared to acknowledge that fact or not. And to disregard the church’s leadership? The church had guided the empire’s decisions for decades, since Nero Arkmast established his rule over the various city-states of the region. This brash new empress was throwing away everything the empire stood for in one quick speech. She wondered if Viola was even worthy to lead the empire. She couldn’t help but think that she hadn’t come back from the dead, and that this was truly some horrible afterlife conjured up as some punishment.
“Separately, but perhaps related, the Chromework Confederacy’s rebellion has come to an end,” Viola continued. “Through negotiations, I have reached an arrangement with their leader, Reginald Maynard. In the coming weeks, you will begin to see changes being instituted to reflect this arrangement. The war is officially over.”
Could it be true, Alice thought. Had the rebellion been quelled? But at what cost? Had Viola made a deal with the devil? What had she given up? Was her distancing herself from the church part of their negotiations? Too many questions flooded Alice’s brain, and she felt herself slipping further away and into darkness. She had doubled over to the ground from the pain and barely clung to consciousness.
“Lastly, the final act to end the atrocity of this night - Fiona Newton must be executed. I ask for no executioner, as this has become my problem to correct. I take no pleasure in this act, but she has become too infectious and dangerous to keep alive.”
Crumpled on the city street, Alice wished that it could be her to carry out this sentence. She attempted to stand to get a view of the act, and was only barely able to gain sight of the empress and the infectious woman. Standing behind Fiona, Viola slid her blade across her prisoner’s neck. Blood spurted outward and down onto the psychopath’s dirty white dress and lab coat. Just before Fiona’s head fell, Alice could have sworn that she saw a smile creep across the Carrier’s face. Having seen her own killer put to justice, however, concealed any doubts about her fate. Fiona was dead. Alice could rest now. Almost immediately upon seeing this act, the operative again collapsed due to her pain and blacked out just beyond the stage at the base of the Sovereign Tower.
Chapter 2. Crowley’s Power
It was unclear what Councilor Crowley felt more. Contempt? Disbelief? Outrage? Mary Elizabeth Arkmast had succumbed to the infection, leaving her daughter to inheri
t the throne. In her speech, she had denounced the church, its religious teachings, and the science that propped it all up. Her beliefs seemed to be only in the superstitious practices of the islanders on Targeaux. She had now employed some form of witchcraft twice, but Crowley sought to unravel those mysteries as some form of deceit. He knew in his heart that there was no power other than the science he had spent his life learning. However she had managed to destroy the infected, it was most certainly a simple trick. Perhaps the scientists at the Center for Empirical Research had indeed found a way to stop the plague victims, and Viola had stolen and used such findings for herself. Whatever the case, Crowley vowed to find a way to restore science’s position within the empire.
Two days had passed since the Carrier Plague had come to an end. Viola had already begun to change the policies enacted by her mother and predecessors. True to her word, the new empress had already shut down the lottery, creating a shortage of experimentation subjects in the Center for Empirical Research. Scientific advancement would surely suffer and stall from her change in policy. How did she expect for the empire to progress without a little sacrifice from its people?
The church too had been affected by the empress. Any political power that its officials had held was stripped of them. Preferential treatment towards the church was effectively abolished, and it was treated as any other religion in the empire, few that there were. He expected the singularity of religions would be abolished. Done were the days afforded to them by the Purification.
Crowley leaned forward in his chair, his head resting on one balled up fist, the hairs of his beard scratching against the skin of his knuckles. He pondered these changes including the ones he was sure were yet to come. He knew that his position within the empire had never been as tenuous as it was now. If he were to have any hope of salvaging the power he held so dearly, he would have to act. The problem had been clearly identified as Viola Arkmast, but removing that problem would prove a far more difficult task than he had ever dealt with before.
As he pondered his next act, he sat in one of the rooms in the private medical facility within the Sovereign Tower’s upper levels. He leaned back in the chair, rubbing his palm against the buzzed hairs of his scalp. The brightly lit room illuminated his dark brown eyes and the weariness they held within them. He was getting older, in body and spirit. Everything he had worked for over the years had slipped away from him in one night. He had plans to remedy his sudden loss of power.
Alice Page laid unconscious at the center of the room. Somehow, the operative was still alive. Or rather, she was alive once again. She had certainly been dead when he last saw her in pieces, stitched together on a metal slab. As an honorable member of the empire, Crowley had instructed she be reconstructed back together, so that she could have a proper burial ceremony. His hypothesis was that when Fiona had drank the blood from the archives, it had restored Alice to life. Why she clung to it after being released from her control and having Viola’s lightning pass through her was less clear.
The operative was hooked up to various medical apparatuses, each attempting to keep her clinging to life. A tube ran into her arm, pumping new blood into her body. Since her arrival, it seemed that she had constantly lost more and more blood, but as far as the doctors could tell, she was not actually bleeding. The liquid just vanished from her body somehow. A pair of sensors laid flat on her chest, stuck above each lung, assisting her breathing and helping her heart pump. Strapped to her finger was a separate sensor that was reading in her heartbeat and periodically printing it out to a machine with a small roll of paper in its tray. The excess paper was now scraping the floor, having not been monitored for some time. The doctors had abandoned her, but he had not. She still had her uses.
Crowley knew that during life, Alice had experimented with a drug labeled the Hart Serum. The treatment had incredible regenerative properties and could have been responsible for Alice’s continued existence. He held a corked vial of the blood red substance in his gloved hand, flipping it over his knuckles idly. Crowley considered injecting his most promising operative with the serum in an attempt to wake her from her slumber, but the prospect did leave him a bit disconcerted. Where would her loyalties truly lie? She had grown up in the church, learning their teachings and becoming baptized. After growing into an adult, Alice had joined the empire, eventually becoming an operative. She was unmatched when it came to accomplishing whatever objectives were laid out before her.
Her appearance, however, left much to be desired. Brutal scars covered her body, and the black stitches that kept her in one piece littered the flesh. Since being brought into the medical facility, her severed limbs had seemed to atrophy. Blood no longer flowed throughout her body, and the doctors saw no reason for her to continue to live. Her heartbeat was irregular, and her brain activity was unlike anything they had seen. Crowley was certain that the Hart Serum was responsible for her prolonged existence, and that it was all that could maintain her life.
The councilor was now the only scientist aware of the serum’s role in her regeneration. Dr. Hart was missing and presumed to be among the scores of dead from the Carrier Plague, and since he had learned of Alice, Crowley had gathered what remained of the serum. He could use it as the carrot to drive Alice in whatever direction he desired. No one else could help the operative but him, and he would see to it that she needed him. She would become his sword with which to strike at the empress when the opportunity arrived.
Having made his decision, Crowley stood and approached Alice’s bedside, brushing his black cloak behind him. Uncorking the tube filled with the serum, he stuck a needle into the concoction and sucked a sizable amount into the syringe. Taking that, the councilor firmly grasped the syringe and jammed it down, through Alice’s chest and into her barely beating heart. Pressing down on the plunger, he injected the serum into her bloodstream and removed the needle. The results were instantaneous. Her sickly pale skin became more flushed. The flesh at each of her severed and pieced together limbs regenerated, stitching itself together again. Checking her pulse on the machine’s output, it’s beat grew stronger and steadier. Crowley turned around, placing the used syringe on a metal table, and when he returned to Alice, her eyes were open and she was awake.
“Councilor?” she asked shakily. Her voice was hoarse. Scratchy and deeper. She didn’t sound as though it were due to her just waking up either. Alice sounded fundamentally different. What other differences would he find, Crowley pondered.
“Operative Page, it seems you’ve returned to us,” he replied. “How do you feel?”
She clutched at her chest, where her skin had suffered a severe burn from the strange red lightning. “A bit of pain,” she answered.
“Yes, I would imagine so,” Crowley said. “Can you tell me what happened? What do you remember?”
“I remember… dying,” Alice explained. “Being crushed and torn to pieces by that train. Then… Then I awoke in a morgue chamber. Controlled by Fiona.”
“Mmm, as I suspected.” He nodded knowingly. “Go on.”
“I wasn’t in control of my actions,” she hazily explained. “She gave me orders, and I had no choice but to comply with them, no matter how much I fought back. When Fiona was finally injected with some syringe, though, I was freed.”
“The others in your situation,” Crowley began. “When the Carrier was injected, they became mindless. Attacked and devoured the living. Why were you different?”
“I can’t say I know, Councilor,” Alice replied, staring into the distance. “Maybe god has chosen me for something greater. Maybe he has purpose for me yet to fulfill.”
He couldn’t help but smile a little. He knew exactly how best to use Alice now. “You suspect a divine intervention?”
“What else could it be?” she replied. “He has brought me back to serve him.”
“And do you know what purpose that would be?”
“I am certain he will convey his desires in time,” Alice said.
; “Perhaps you are correct, Operative,” he replied. Holding the emptied vial of Hart Serum up for her to see, Crowley continued, “The regenerative tonic you had been taking seems to be the only thing allowing that heart of yours to continue pumping. I expect you’ll need daily regimens until you are fully healed.”
“I see,” Alice said.
“So here is the deal,” he began. “You will go back to work as an operative, reporting directly to me instead of the Reclamation Bureau now that it is in shambles, and I will make sure you are supplied with the serum that you need.”
“Shambles?” she asked. “What happened to it?”
“Mmm, that’s right,” Crowley said. “You wouldn’t know. Your boss, Owen Sloan, was killed.”
“How?” she inquired with a look of shock written across her face.
“The heretic that you allowed to escape,” he explained. “It was either her or her… associate that killed him. Director Sloan acquired the dancer for his own purposes, and it seems things went awry somewhere along the way.”
“Are the women in custody?” Alice asked.
“I am afraid not,” Crowley answered. “It seems the pardon that our new empress issued toward the heretic has white-washed all her and her compatriots’ misdeeds.”
“How can we sit idly by, while that murderer runs free?” the operative demanded.
“We do what we are ordered, Operative Page,” the councilor replied. “And you will continue to follow the chain of command whether you like the orders or not.”
“Yes, sir,” she simply replied with a nod.
“The empire is changing,” he continued. “It is up to the faithful to see that it is not tarnished. I am sure god will guide you on your new path.”
“As am I, Councilor,” Alice agreed.
“I will have your first assignment shortly,” he said, beginning to leave the room. “But first, there is a funeral I must attend.”