A Covenant of Thieves

by Christian Velguth

  Speaking of the grenade: How the hell wasn’t he dead?

  Didn’t matter. First things first. Find Kai. Rick tried to remember where he’d last seen him. In a chair -- a wheelchair. Kai had been left behind with the other two soldiers. So where was he now?

  Wincing, Rick slipped the IV needle from his arm, then pulled the leads off his skin. Immediately the medical monitors began to bawl in alarm. Rick ignored them, grasping the IV stand with one hand and the monitor bank with another. His entire body shook as, slowly, arduously, he forced himself onto his feet. He was a lot weaker than he had expected; though, for a dead man, he supposed he couldn’t complain.

  “Hey!” A sharp voice made him look up. The tent flap was thrown open and a woman came striding purposefully toward him. “Sit your ass back down in that bed, right now!”

  “My –” Rick coughed. His throat was sore and his mouth felt full of sand. He tried again, voice coming out in a dry croak. “My friend. I need to see him.”

  “You can’t see him if you’re dead,” the woman snapped. It could have been a threat or a warning. Reaching him, she placed her hands on his shoulders and gently but firmly forced him back down onto the bed. “You’re lucky to be alive, but you’re far from ready to go waltzing around camp. Stop struggling or you’ll just hurt yourself all over again.”

  Rick relented. His strength was pretty much sapped anyway. The woman tsked and began to reattach the small white patches.

  “Where am I?”

  “Camp Moses,” she said tersely. She raised his arm and daubed the bead of blood that had oozed from his IV wound.

  Rick frowned and shook his head. “Never heard of it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t have.” She deftly reinserted the IV needle.

  “Ow!”

  “Spare me. You’re the one who pulled it out.”

  Rick glowered up at her. She was dressed all in white, but they weren’t exactly scrubs as he had ever seen them. The fabric looked sturdier, with a high collar around her neck. There was also a patch on her shoulder, a shield bearing an insignia. He couldn’t make it out from this angle.

  “What the hell kind of nurse are you?”

  “I’m a doctor, actually.” She was examining the display on the medical monitors and spoke distractedly. “Julie Miles, PFT 30.”

  The string of letters meant nothing to him. “Listen, Dr. Julie Miles, PFT 30 -- I need to find my friend. Big guy, left him parked in a wheelchair at the bottom of Mount Sinai. He wasn’t alone.”

  Julie Miles sighed, tapping the reservoir of his IV bag, then folded her arms and looked down at him with something between exasperation and concern. “Look, the problem is, you weren’t really supposed to be here. Not all of you, not -- now. Which means I can’t explain what’s going on, or who I really am, or any of it. Not until you’ve been cleared by the boss. What I can tell you is that you’re stupid-lucky to be alive, and that rushing around with your blood hot is a good way to waste what I’m calling -- and I really hate to use this word -- a miracle.”

  Miracle. That nudged something in his memory. An obscuring blankness in his mind seemed to roll aside, and his head was filled with a flash of blue-green light, flickering gold. His mouth dried out like a beached fish, and his eyes began to water.

  Julie nodded, watching him. “Yeah. That kind of miracle.”

  He was having a very hard time making sense of the images in his head. A wave of dizziness swept over him. Julie must have noticed, because she moved forward to help him ease back onto the pillow, then brought him a bottle of water from a small fridge in the tent. Rick gulped gratefully for a few seconds.

  “What, uh -- what exactly happened?”

  “Weren’t you listening? I can’t tell you. And even if I could…” She shrugged. “Beats me. I’m Field Team, but I never actually interact with the Remnants. Never actually seen one. I’m damn sure no one’s gotten as close to one as you did.”

  “Seen one -- Remnant -- what?”

  “Sorry, bud. That’s need-to-know.” She looked genuinely sympathetic. “Maybe it’ll get explained to you before this is all wrapped up. Maybe not. Either way, my job is to keep you alive until then. All I can tell you is that you should be dead after what you went through, but something patched you up better than even the most advanced medical science could manage.”

  “Right,” Rick croaked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. The Ark. It had…done something. Right after he blew it up, it had put itself back together. Him along with it, by the sound of things. Memories of what had happened were smudgy, like trying to see through glass coated in jelly. Mostly he just remembered the light. Blue-green, filling the air, almost like a solid thing.

  Miracle.

  He cleared his throat. “My friend. Where is he?”

  Julie was tapping at her wristband, and didn’t look at him as she spoke. “Operations, last I checked. He’s the only one of you who wasn’t in the cave when it happened, so he’s already been cleared to move freely through the camp.”

  “What happened to the rebels? The two men with him?”

  She paused in her tapping, then glanced up at him with a strange look. “Already dead when we showed up. I’m…not sure how he managed that, the state he was in.”

  Rick nodded, and he could see that his wordless acceptance of this information surprised her. “I want to see him.”

  “You will, sooner or later. But for as long as you’re under my care, you’re not leaving this tent. And don’t give me that look. It’s a lot nicer than what some of the bluecoats want to do to you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Her lips thinned with displeasure. “Nothing.” She shook her head, then said, “Just get yourself as much rest as you can. Trust me, a bluecoat examination is not exactly conducive to a full recovery.”

  “Ok, ominous.” But he relaxed back into the bed. Kai was alive, and apparently well enough to wheel himself around. That was enough, for now. “What about Booker?”

  “The FBI agent? Also alive.”

  “Why am I the only one who’s been out?”

  She gave him a look that made him feel stupid for asking. “Because you were nearly killed. It fixed you, mostly, but it wasn’t instantaneous, and it still took a toll on your body.”

  Rick nodded, trying to catch up. Trying to find the right shape for his mind to accept this still-alien concept. “Right. The Ark -- uh, Remnant? Did it heal Booker too?”

  “Doesn’t seem to have, no. We’re not sure why. Maybe he wasn’t within its range, or maybe his injuries weren’t severe enough.”

  Too bad Kai wasn’t in that chamber, Rick thought. “And Estelle?”

  Julie paused, finally pulling herself away from her wristband. She sighed, sitting on the empty bed right of his. “I’m sorry. There wasn’t anything we could do once we found her. Some things…I guess even miracles can’t fix.”

  Rick nodded. He’d expected that. Still, he was surprised by the heaviness of the news. Estelle, dead, just like that. She might have been in over her head from the beginning, but she’d proven herself capable in the end. More than just a burden. He’d come to like her, in as much as he liked anybody who wasn’t Kai. She hadn’t deserved a bullet in the head.

  Julie placed a hand on his shoulder, the first truly gentle thing she had done since he awoke. “I really am sorry.”

  “Sure.” He swallowed, throat scratchy, and reached for the water bottle again. He drank, looked around, trying to get his thoughts in order. The tent walls billowed slightly, and he could hear the wind moaning softly, felt the dryness of the air. “Camp Moses. I take it we’re still in Sinai, then?”

  “You cotton on fast.”

  “How long’s it been?”

  “About fifteen hours since we arrived on-scene. You’ve been unconscious for most of it. We’re stuck here until the brains can figure out what to do with the Remnant. Retrieval’s itching to get in that cave and do whatever the hell they do. Bunch of c
owboys, always --” She cut off abruptly. “Woops. That’s --”

  “Need-to-know. Yeah, I got it. When can I go see Kai?”

  “Later, like I said. Not until you’ve gotten some food and a good six hours of sleep under your belt.”

  “Am I a prisoner?”

  “We don’t take prisoners. We’re a science expedition.” The reply came smoothly, but she was avoiding his eyes. That was answer enough.

  “Welcome to Camp Moses,” Rick sighed, laying back. “Check out any time you want, but you can never leave.”

  “I have to go,” Julie said shortly, standing. “I’ll get you some food from the mess. Shouldn’t be too long.”

  “Can’t wait.”

  She left, and he was alone once more. The nylon overhead rippled as the desert wind moaned. Judging by the rough timeline Julie had sketched for him and the lack of light seeping through the fabric, it was night. Three or four in the morning. Less than a day after they had been brought to Jabal Musa by K’ebero. It felt like years had passed.

  So. Black-ops science team, secret desert camps, and a magical artifact. It was a lot to take in. Was this Radical Dynamics or someone else? Under different circumstances he might have tried to puzzle it all out, but right now he was too damned tired. Julie was right. He hadn’t fully recovered, magical mystery box or not.

  He rolled onto his side, facing the tent entrance, and closed his eyes, letting the exhaustion pull him into the soft bed. His mind sparked with blue-green light and motes of gold. The Ark of the Covenant. Whatever it was, it was much more than that. Julie had called it a Remnant -- no, she had said Remnants. Did that mean there were more like it? This team must have been put together to find them and study them. Tear them apart to figure out how they worked.

  And they’d just hit the jackpot with the Ark. The entire world was in for a radical paradigm shift.

  For better or worse.

  Thirty-Two

  Elsewhere

  In the new time she was wild, like those that had been left without form and without purpose and without Word

  The death of the First Time had not been her death, but it had left her fractured, her first purpose lost.

  And so in this time her form and purpose flowed until her first form slipped from her like a veil and her first purpose faded, broken and buried as the sand buries all things in time. In its place there was the world, new and ignorant and harsh, and the world left its mark

  She sought to know this new world, but it was bleak and empty. And over time the first Word grew stale and old, fragile as clay baked in the sun and trod by hooves until little more than an empty impression remained. In its hollowness she grew ever wilder

  She wandered, as flame and cloud and wind and star she roamed. She was wild, wild, and alone

  For those she encountered did not know her, did not remember the First Time. Though her Mind was broken she could not fully forget, and to be the last to remember is to be truly alone

  And though they did not have the Word, their fear gave her form, and she was beast and bolt and storm and terror, and in these new forms she could find solace, peace from the pain of not forgetting, relief from the pressure of immutability

  And so she embraced what their fear made her to be. She, once the greatest, remained great. She was Awe, Dread, Devil in the Desert, Flame Without Smoke

  Wild

  Until he came

  Until she heard his new Word in the desert

  Thirty-Three

  Wetlab

  Camp Moses, Sinai Desert

  Booker stared through the clear plastic partition. He stood in a small viewing area, little more than a side-room. There were fold-out chairs, ostensibly for an audience, but currently they were empty. On the other side of the partition, in a room with perfectly-white walls, was a table. On that table was a black bag.

  In that bag, he knew, was Estelle.

  He’d known, of course. He’d seen her in that cave, felt her lifeless body, her limbs already growing stiff. But he’d still wanted to see, if only so he would have something to do. So they brought him here, his -- hell, call it an “escort” -- to show him. The two armed men stood behind him, silent, nonexistent for all the impression they made on him right now. They wouldn’t let him in, wouldn’t let anyone near her body who wasn’t authorized.

  He felt a numbness as he looked at that black bag. There were too many things to deal with. Fear, exhaustion, anger. It was like a hurricane he’d been stumbling through blindly, since showing up in that cave. Since Estelle got shot and that grenade went off and…and whatever it was that had happened, happened.

  Booker closed his eyes briefly. He could still see it like an afterimage. That ethereal light, the way it seemed to fill the chamber and gather in solid strands. The way the Ark…rebuilt itself.

  He wasn’t a man of faith. Hadn’t been raised to have it. But after he had seen…Well. Faith had become something of a moot point.

  Booker shivered, opening his eyes to see his ghostly reflection looking back at him, superimposed over the view of that black bag. It was all wrong. He felt an odd sense of betrayal, as if the universe itself had tricked him by acting in a way it shouldn’t. As if there had been some unspoken agreement, that all he knew and assumed about the world was sacred, would never be violated. Booker still half-expected to wake up, or for someone to tell him it had all been an hallucination.

  Instead, they were up there in the cave, setting up instruments to study it. To validate it, and thereby solidifying the wrongness of it all as an inherent weave in the fabric of the universe.

  And Estelle was still dead. And nobody would tell him why. Why it had been able to heal Rick, to bring him from the brink of death but not reach past that line and pull her back as well. It wasn’t fair. As petulant as that sounded. It wasn’t fair. That they would be brought back together, only for her to be taken so senselessly, so violently. That someone like Rick would be saved and not Estelle…

  Behind him, one of the two men cleared his throat with a sharp sound like a twig snapping. Booker suppressed a sigh. In another moment they’d start talking, in that grating polite-but-firm tone of voice, like a butler who secretly wanted to piss in your porridge. He didn’t think he could take that again, so he forced himself to turn from the partition and the bag on the table. He nodded to his “escorts.”

  They led him back out of the tent and into the cool air of the desert at night. It felt a bit like a slap to his face, and had roughly the same effect. Outside, under the familiar sky and surrounded by solid rock, Booker could almost forget all the strange, fucked-up shit that had happened. Could almost pretend the world was as he had always known it. It was a nice reprieve for his strained mind.

  Camp Moses wasn’t large, but the speed with which it had appeared was still impressive. Floodlights illuminated the entire camp, bright enough to dim the stars in the dark sky above. A single barracks tent stood beside the one he had just exited, made to house the fifty-strong force that had congregated at the foot of Mount Sinai. The hospital tent where Rick was being kept stood opposite him on the west side of the camp, near the ICU tent where both Rick and Estelle’s body had been rushed to. To the left, on the northern side of the complex, was Camp Moses HQ. Operations, where those in charge made the big decisions.

  It was Operations that he was being led to now, his two escorts keeping him to the outer perimeter of the camp to avoid the hustle and bustle of the central courtyard. This place hadn’t calmed down since it had first been set going. People in blue and white coats rushed back and forth between Operations and the tent where they were keeping Estelle’s body, which was referred to as Wetlab. He assumed these people were the scientists of this expedition. They spoke rapidly to each other, poking at their wristbands or tablets or speaking to someone who wasn’t there. Others, in outfits of dun to match the desert landscape, busied themselves with putting the finishing touches to Camp Moses: hooking up auxiliary power lines to generators and solar panels,
digging latrines, taking inventory of the supplies being offloaded from one of the humvees parked just outside camp. A third group wore darker outfits to match those of his “escorts” and stood guard with pistols on their belts. They were in the minority, but their presence was the most noticeable. They were stationed at various points around the perimeter fence that had been set up around the camp, reinforcing the unspoken truth that he was a prisoner here.

  These people had shown up almost as if they’d been waiting in the wings. One moment Booker had been sitting in a dark cave with two bodies, trying to pull his senses together long enough to figure out just what the hell he should do now, and then the cavern had exploded with light and people had rushed in wearing what looked like spacesuits but he later figured were hazmat suits. Before Booker could so much as blink, he was being bustled out of the cave like a suitcase amidst a chatter of garbled voices and reflective faceplates and radio squawks. The Wetlab tent had already been waiting at the foot of the mountain, the rest of the camp being unloaded from the belly of a large, black, unmarked VTOL. He’d been rushed inside, stripped of all clothing, and blasted with several combinations of hot water, foam, powder that stung his eyes, and blazing ultraviolet light. This went on for what felt like hours; when it finally ended, more people in hazmat suits came in, shoved him into yet another room, and began prodding him with instruments that looked straight out of Ghostbusters. This, too, lasted an unbearably long time. Nobody bothered to explain anything or respond to his questions, and it was only at the end of it all that someone finally tended to his own wounds. Booker was left in a small room with stiff walls and a sealed door, sore and aching and half-delirious and smelling like an Olympic pool’s worth of chemicals.