THE BATTLE AT LAST SHALL BE WON
Ealish lay on her back under the tent of a clean white sheet, wishing she’d never had news from her homeland. Not that it would have changed things. The wail of the bean sí predicted death without fail—across oceans, between worlds.
Her mother had phoned from the Isle of Man, where her family lived almost always.
Almost…
They moved to the Isle from Ireland, some to become mortal, some not.
Now Ealish lived in America to support her husband’s job.
“You’re meant to come home, Ealish.” Just that and no more, though the quiver in her mother’s voice conveyed what she dared not speak.
Please, please don’t let it be Aland. For mercy’s sake, don’t take my child.
Ealish slid to the edge of the table as Dr. Cortland, her obstetrician, guided her feet into cold, steel stirrups. Surrounded by cabinets and trays of medical implements, she gagged on antiseptic, paper glued to the sweat of her spine.
The baby rolled over inside her stomach. He’s fine. He has to be.
In her mind, Ealish sang to him, snatching the words from memory, more than a thousand years old:
Long long ago in this ancient land
A battle took place where two hills now stand
And on the plain there lay the slain
For neither the battle was won
So the bard did sing of these fairy hills
Where bloom the white flowers and daffodils
One big one small Si Bheag Si Mhor
And never the battle is won
‘Twas after the battle the prophet foretold
No rest would be found for these warriors bold
Till they unite and fight one common foe
And then would the battle be won.
“You’ll feel pressure,” Dr. Cortland said, inserting the speculum. “Try to relax as much as you can.”
Ealish stared at the white tile ceiling, ignoring its perforations. Instead, she looked inward, with the gift of her second-sight, to study the perfect child who nestled beneath her ribs.
He sucked on a tiny fist, his knees drawn up to his chest. Like the wings of a bird, his heart beat purposefully and fast.
“You’re not dilated,” Dr. Cortland said. “False labor can make it seem so and the cramps can be just as painful. The only thing I can tell is that there’s a danger of breech birth if he doesn’t turn himself soon.”
Ealish could see that herself. One more trouble to add to her list.
She was seven months along, time enough for illness and torment. It began with toxemia, her ankles and legs swelling. Then she’d almost burst her appendix and battled the threat of gangrene.
Before operating, Dr. Cortland had warned her husband he might lose them both. Ealish hurt but she hadn’t worried. It being the way of birth, she suffered pain with gladness—wombs too often barren amongst her long-lived breed.
And the bean sí held silent.
Until now.
She didn’t marvel at the magic that could reach her across continents, for it also lived within her.
Dr. Cortland removed the speculum in a chill slither of lubricant. “Is Alister still in Libya?”
‘Yes.” Though he, too, had been born in the British Isles, her husband worked as a lawyer for the American Foreign Service.
Ealish pushed herself up and withdrew her feet from the stirrups.
“If you like,” Dr. Cortland offered, “I can provide Alister with documentation to obtain a leave of absence.”
Gratitude filled her heart. She didn’t ask whether she could travel. Her mother required her presence; there was no question of disobeying. Nor could she save her family unless she returned to her base of power.
###
In the cool wind of summer, the ferry from Liverpool crossed the Irish Sea, light dappling green water, foam swirling in their wake. From Ellan Vannin, Ealish booked a necessary detour to the coast of Donegal then disembarked on the Tonn Banks.
Waves rose up behind her, crested and crashed at her feet. Seabirds whirled, shrilling. She tasted salt on her lips. Ealish stood at the tomb of her grandfather, Manannan Mac Lir, as empty of his bones as the Otherworld was full.
Though it was the way of men to pit their spirits and powers against the gods of old, in time, they grew weary of bloodshed. Their people cried out for peace. Ealish’s ancestors, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, chose banishment to their palaces in Ireland’s green mounds. They became the daoine sidhe.
Ealish knelt, shrouded in mist, to feel her child blessed. Power tingled through her fingers. Wind lifted her long dark curls. Standing not at a grave but a doorway, she stepped into the glow of the Otherworld, closest at dusk and dawn.
Breathing vaporous clouds of magic, she walked an opalescent path to reach the hawthorn tree that was hers and hers alone. White-blossomed, its branches spread in the joy of immortality, reaching far then vanishing, woven into the Otherworld—as vital as veins and capillaries.
Ealish plucked a fruit the size of a raspberry. Then she pricked her finger on one of many thorns.
Strength flowed into her, hissing and crackling, like tinder set aflame.
###
“Now look at you!” cried her mother. “Too pale, Ealish, too thin.”
Ealish had expected a different welcome, at least a chance to catch her breath. She hugged her mother back. “It’s only that the child is small. In two months, I’ll be a horse.”
“I think not, Ealish.” Her mother bit her lip, pulling free of her embrace—still regal, still beautiful. Twilight sparkled in her eyes, her hair as pale as flax. Limbs, long and slender, spoke of dancing in hidden fields to faerie pipes and strings. Her mother wore a shift and sensible shoes, but Ealish could recall her in a gown of gilded thread with gems at her wrists and throat, a diadem upon her head.
Her father and two brothers had died heroes’ deaths while fighting the Fomor at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh. Ealish remembered them as her mother did, with a matching choker of tears.
Things she’d never known were shared when Ealish touched it, always something different, inerasable and precious.
“Come,” Reina said, taking her hand. “And see what has changed.”
Ealish let herself be led under ceilings of post and beam past unremarkable common areas to the room that had once been hers.
As her feet touched living moss, Ealish fell to her knees.
A glade awaited her son of greenery and water-song. The roots of a young rowan tree formed a cradle that would grow with him. His heart’s home. His sentinel.
###
Ealish drove to the airport at Ronaldsway in time to meet Alister. He stood framed by a sky of silver on the walk in front of the terminal, the nascent gray of storm clouds as diluted as watercolors.
She left the car to meet him, drowning in his presence; the noble lines of his face.
Sweat-dampened hair curled dark against his brow over long-lashed amethyst eyes, meeting her gaze with hesitance. Pale lips pressed in a line as he came to her, fumbling.
She said, “You look weary, love,” and reached for one of his bags to postpone the moment of touch when she would know her husband’s fate. He would have none of it. Alister brushed aside her hand then clasped her in strong arms, pressing a kiss to her hair, her face, her throat.
The scent of hawthorn blooms, crushed against his heart, overrode all other sense. “You remembered.”
Alister kissed her again, this time on her lips. “It is not a thing to forget.”
###
In the family that Ealish stemmed from, one’s tree was defended fiercely. As the expression of life-everlasting, its blossoms held power and hope. Pressed to the heart of a lover, it offered the closest thing to a prayer for a woman born with no soul.
###
Reina served a dinner of spuds and herring while Ealish watched her husband. He used his knife and fork to conceal his lack of appetite, cutting his food to mincemeat so it seemed to be disappearing. Alister knew better than to try to hide his condition. She knew why he did. He feared for her and Aland, and would accept none of her help against the threat of sapping her strength.
Ealish healed him nevertheless. With her most subtle magic, she traced the path of cancer she’d discovered at his touch. From where it curled inside his stomach to branch out toward his organs, she turned its hunger against itself. The cells became cannibals, eating away at their own. In time, Alister slumped, his energy too long diverted.
Reina removed their plates. “I’ll not keep you from each other.”
Ealish helped Alister off to bed, smiling a promise. “For the moment I’ll let you sleep. Don’t expect it to last forever.”
He lay down on the guest bed, his gaze soft upon her. “You shouldn’t have, Ealish. The baby—”
“Is fine,” Ealish said, tucking the sheets around him.
Alister closed his eyes and slept.
She knelt to watch over him until color returned to his face. Then she withdrew the fruit of her hawthorn from a pocket of her sweater. She placed it under his pillow and laid a kiss on his lips.
Rain spattered the windows as she left to face her last battle. It sang to her like sorrow, shushing against the glass.
###
For three nights and three days, Ealish fought in her mother’s bed to forestall the birth of their child. Alister slept on while Reina held her hand.
Ealish gave and gave until she had no more to give. Sensing Eevul’s presence, she turned to face Reina. “Taaa dy liooar,” she said in Manx, meaning “time enough.”
Her mother closed her eyes, rose and stood aside.
The bean si took her place, pale in every sense.
“I would bargain,” Ealish said.
Eevul smiled. “You cannot bargain for yourself.”
In her hand, she held a needle, threaded with her hair. She touched Ealish’s cheeks to gather her glistening tears. One-by-one, the bean sí strung them, crafting a small bracelet.
Small enough for a newborn.
Ealish lifted a hand to still her trembling lips. “Our Aland was never in danger.”
“No,” Eevul said. “You have carried a faerie king.”
As the greatest of all bean sí, Eevul commanded twenty-four others, who began to join her by twos and threes to proclaim the birth of their king. They surrounded the bed in a circle, white-robed and silent.
Yet they numbered twenty-three.
“Ah,” Ealish said.
The bean sí nodded. “I cried for you, dear heart.”
Ealish left the bed to look upon herself. She watched Eevul part her stomach to deliver Aland in breech. There was no blood or struggle, only the bean sí’s magic. Eevul tied the bracelet around the baby’s ankle.
Then her mother took the child.
Alister woke to hear them singing as Reina placed Aland in his arms.
Now on this day in this ancient land
Was born a faerie king to stand
Of whom the bean sí sing as one
For the battle at last shall be won
Her mother had phoned from the Isle of Man, where her family lived almost always.
Almost…
They moved to the Isle from Ireland, some to become mortal, some not.
Now Ealish lived in America to support her husband’s job.
“You’re meant to come home, Ealish.” Just that and no more, though the quiver in her mother’s voice conveyed what she dared not speak.
Please, please don’t let it be Aland. For mercy’s sake, don’t take my child.
Ealish slid to the edge of the table as Dr. Cortland, her obstetrician, guided her feet into cold, steel stirrups. Surrounded by cabinets and trays of medical implements, she gagged on antiseptic, paper glued to the sweat of her spine.
The baby rolled over inside her stomach. He’s fine. He has to be.
In her mind, Ealish sang to him, snatching the words from memory, more than a thousand years old:
Long long ago in this ancient land
A battle took place where two hills now stand
And on the plain there lay the slain
For neither the battle was won
So the bard did sing of these fairy hills
Where bloom the white flowers and daffodils
One big one small Si Bheag Si Mhor
And never the battle is won
‘Twas after the battle the prophet foretold
No rest would be found for these warriors bold
Till they unite and fight one common foe
And then would the battle be won.
“You’ll feel pressure,” Dr. Cortland said, inserting the speculum. “Try to relax as much as you can.”
Ealish stared at the white tile ceiling, ignoring its perforations. Instead, she looked inward, with the gift of her second-sight, to study the perfect child who nestled beneath her ribs.
He sucked on a tiny fist, his knees drawn up to his chest. Like the wings of a bird, his heart beat purposefully and fast.
“You’re not dilated,” Dr. Cortland said. “False labor can make it seem so and the cramps can be just as painful. The only thing I can tell is that there’s a danger of breech birth if he doesn’t turn himself soon.”
Ealish could see that herself. One more trouble to add to her list.
She was seven months along, time enough for illness and torment. It began with toxemia, her ankles and legs swelling. Then she’d almost burst her appendix and battled the threat of gangrene.
Before operating, Dr. Cortland had warned her husband he might lose them both. Ealish hurt but she hadn’t worried. It being the way of birth, she suffered pain with gladness—wombs too often barren amongst her long-lived breed.
And the bean sí held silent.
Until now.
She didn’t marvel at the magic that could reach her across continents, for it also lived within her.
Dr. Cortland removed the speculum in a chill slither of lubricant. “Is Alister still in Libya?”
‘Yes.” Though he, too, had been born in the British Isles, her husband worked as a lawyer for the American Foreign Service.
Ealish pushed herself up and withdrew her feet from the stirrups.
“If you like,” Dr. Cortland offered, “I can provide Alister with documentation to obtain a leave of absence.”
Gratitude filled her heart. She didn’t ask whether she could travel. Her mother required her presence; there was no question of disobeying. Nor could she save her family unless she returned to her base of power.
###
In the cool wind of summer, the ferry from Liverpool crossed the Irish Sea, light dappling green water, foam swirling in their wake. From Ellan Vannin, Ealish booked a necessary detour to the coast of Donegal then disembarked on the Tonn Banks.
Waves rose up behind her, crested and crashed at her feet. Seabirds whirled, shrilling. She tasted salt on her lips. Ealish stood at the tomb of her grandfather, Manannan Mac Lir, as empty of his bones as the Otherworld was full.
Though it was the way of men to pit their spirits and powers against the gods of old, in time, they grew weary of bloodshed. Their people cried out for peace. Ealish’s ancestors, the Tuatha Dé Danaan, chose banishment to their palaces in Ireland’s green mounds. They became the daoine sidhe.
Ealish knelt, shrouded in mist, to feel her child blessed. Power tingled through her fingers. Wind lifted her long dark curls. Standing not at a grave but a doorway, she stepped into the glow of the Otherworld, closest at dusk and dawn.
Breathing vaporous clouds of magic, she walked an opalescent path to reach the hawthorn tree that was hers and hers alone. White-blossomed, its branches spread in the joy of immortality, reaching far then vanishing, woven into the Otherworld—as vital as veins and capillaries.
Ealish plucked a fruit the size of a raspberry. Then she pricked her finger on one of many thorns.
Strength flowed into her, hissing and crackling, like tinder set aflame.
###
“Now look at you!” cried her mother. “Too pale, Ealish, too thin.”
Ealish had expected a different welcome, at least a chance to catch her breath. She hugged her mother back. “It’s only that the child is small. In two months, I’ll be a horse.”
“I think not, Ealish.” Her mother bit her lip, pulling free of her embrace—still regal, still beautiful. Twilight sparkled in her eyes, her hair as pale as flax. Limbs, long and slender, spoke of dancing in hidden fields to faerie pipes and strings. Her mother wore a shift and sensible shoes, but Ealish could recall her in a gown of gilded thread with gems at her wrists and throat, a diadem upon her head.
Her father and two brothers had died heroes’ deaths while fighting the Fomor at the Second Battle of Magh Tuireadh. Ealish remembered them as her mother did, with a matching choker of tears.
Things she’d never known were shared when Ealish touched it, always something different, inerasable and precious.
“Come,” Reina said, taking her hand. “And see what has changed.”
Ealish let herself be led under ceilings of post and beam past unremarkable common areas to the room that had once been hers.
As her feet touched living moss, Ealish fell to her knees.
A glade awaited her son of greenery and water-song. The roots of a young rowan tree formed a cradle that would grow with him. His heart’s home. His sentinel.
###
Ealish drove to the airport at Ronaldsway in time to meet Alister. He stood framed by a sky of silver on the walk in front of the terminal, the nascent gray of storm clouds as diluted as watercolors.
She left the car to meet him, drowning in his presence; the noble lines of his face.
Sweat-dampened hair curled dark against his brow over long-lashed amethyst eyes, meeting her gaze with hesitance. Pale lips pressed in a line as he came to her, fumbling.
She said, “You look weary, love,” and reached for one of his bags to postpone the moment of touch when she would know her husband’s fate. He would have none of it. Alister brushed aside her hand then clasped her in strong arms, pressing a kiss to her hair, her face, her throat.
The scent of hawthorn blooms, crushed against his heart, overrode all other sense. “You remembered.”
Alister kissed her again, this time on her lips. “It is not a thing to forget.”
###
In the family that Ealish stemmed from, one’s tree was defended fiercely. As the expression of life-everlasting, its blossoms held power and hope. Pressed to the heart of a lover, it offered the closest thing to a prayer for a woman born with no soul.
###
Reina served a dinner of spuds and herring while Ealish watched her husband. He used his knife and fork to conceal his lack of appetite, cutting his food to mincemeat so it seemed to be disappearing. Alister knew better than to try to hide his condition. She knew why he did. He feared for her and Aland, and would accept none of her help against the threat of sapping her strength.
Ealish healed him nevertheless. With her most subtle magic, she traced the path of cancer she’d discovered at his touch. From where it curled inside his stomach to branch out toward his organs, she turned its hunger against itself. The cells became cannibals, eating away at their own. In time, Alister slumped, his energy too long diverted.
Reina removed their plates. “I’ll not keep you from each other.”
Ealish helped Alister off to bed, smiling a promise. “For the moment I’ll let you sleep. Don’t expect it to last forever.”
He lay down on the guest bed, his gaze soft upon her. “You shouldn’t have, Ealish. The baby—”
“Is fine,” Ealish said, tucking the sheets around him.
Alister closed his eyes and slept.
She knelt to watch over him until color returned to his face. Then she withdrew the fruit of her hawthorn from a pocket of her sweater. She placed it under his pillow and laid a kiss on his lips.
Rain spattered the windows as she left to face her last battle. It sang to her like sorrow, shushing against the glass.
###
For three nights and three days, Ealish fought in her mother’s bed to forestall the birth of their child. Alister slept on while Reina held her hand.
Ealish gave and gave until she had no more to give. Sensing Eevul’s presence, she turned to face Reina. “Taaa dy liooar,” she said in Manx, meaning “time enough.”
Her mother closed her eyes, rose and stood aside.
The bean si took her place, pale in every sense.
“I would bargain,” Ealish said.
Eevul smiled. “You cannot bargain for yourself.”
In her hand, she held a needle, threaded with her hair. She touched Ealish’s cheeks to gather her glistening tears. One-by-one, the bean sí strung them, crafting a small bracelet.
Small enough for a newborn.
Ealish lifted a hand to still her trembling lips. “Our Aland was never in danger.”
“No,” Eevul said. “You have carried a faerie king.”
As the greatest of all bean sí, Eevul commanded twenty-four others, who began to join her by twos and threes to proclaim the birth of their king. They surrounded the bed in a circle, white-robed and silent.
Yet they numbered twenty-three.
“Ah,” Ealish said.
The bean sí nodded. “I cried for you, dear heart.”
###
Ealish left the bed to look upon herself. She watched Eevul part her stomach to deliver Aland in breech. There was no blood or struggle, only the bean sí’s magic. Eevul tied the bracelet around the baby’s ankle.
Then her mother took the child.
Alister woke to hear them singing as Reina placed Aland in his arms.
Now on this day in this ancient land
Was born a faerie king to stand
Of whom the bean sí sing as one
For the battle at last shall be won
IN THE "NOT-FLESH" OF DREAMS
Once the Earth’s poles stopped moving in spiraling circular wobbles over shifting seven year cycles, the world of 2015 was devastated by earthquakes, tsunamis, colder winters and super-storms. People were told to expect an Ice Age, but the proponents of preparedness were never as deeply entrenched as the lobby on global warming.
Not that lobbying mattered by 2017, when the Ice Age began in earnest.
There were few ways to cope and nowhere to put the snow. No way to deliver fuel. No way to shop for groceries. People froze, starved or committed suicide. And six million people vanished overnight.
Governments called it the Rapture.
The abandoned knew they lied.
###
As she emerges from cryosleep, Silvana opens her eyes to darkness. For one heart-pounding moment, she fears she’s been blinded, but then she perceives her aura, glowing like a bruise.
“Waking,” the computer says in a crisp, feminine voice. “Restoration stage nine: tested and complete. Proceeding to stage ten: full consciousness.”
Silvana wiggles her toes and fingers, which burn as if on fire.
“C-c-consciousness restored,” the computer says. “Stage ten: c-c-complete.”
“You’re stuttering, Phoebe. Why?” Silvana frantically works her mouth until the numbness leaves her face.
“I-I’m n-not sure,” the computer replies.
Chill sweat beads on Silvana’s lip and wets the back of her shirt.
The bed of the cryo-unit slides out of its housing, preparing her for discharge. Luckily for Silvana, she’s bedded at ground level, as are all the custodians of the six million people buried underground.
The computer says,“P-p-please w-wait for the remainder of the sequence.”
“Override,”Silvana says. “I’ll get out by myself.”
After waving away the vapor amassing around her face, she unscrews the couplers to ports in her arms and legs. She presses the panic lever, which parts the cryo-ceiling, then scrambles out of the unit, trembling with unease.
Her legs shake as she lurches through the aisle with one hand on a wall, twenty cryo-units tall and fifty units wide. Both knees buckle and
she falls. She pushes herself off the concrete and, wincing, hurries on.
Each wall is part of a maze, hundreds of feet deep and thousands of yards wide. At the first intersection, she trips motion sensors that activate amber glow-rods. Their light leads to the control block, where she passes a retinal scan and lays her hand on an access panel. When the vault door swings open, she steps into deeper darkness, despite the tiny indicators blinking signs of progress on the computer’s banks of components.
“P-p-please wait,”the computer says. “Approaching s-s-stage eleven, s-s-stage ten, stage nine.”
Silvana bites her lip and sits at the only console. She types a command on the keyboard to open the user log then squints as the screen turns brighter.
11:04:17 User 322207754 has logged off.
12:17:01 User 111000876 has logged on.
12:17:01 Multiple users are logged on.
Silvana types a request:
12:18:05 Show all users currently logged on.
A fan whirs into action as hard drives click and hum. The screen remains motionless until she types her request again. Then the computer
reports:
12:20:34 One other user is logged on.
Now that all of her senses function, Silvana smells fresh-cut flowers. On a shelf directly behind her lies a purple jungle bloom.
But that's impossible. Unless…
Silvana rubs at the worry lines furrowing her forehead.
First the log-on, now the flower. Somehow, someone has accessed the facility from the not-flesh of dreams.
###
The bunker was built in Germany, where geographical stability and a rock-solid economy made such an enormous undertaking both possible and practical. But living underground for more than a matter of weeks required a team of global researchers to master cryogenics. There was no other means to save so many people, keep them fit and keep them nourished, for as long as a decade, if necessary.
There was, however, a problem.
Preliminary tests showed that subjects kept stable at extremely low temperatures had no capacity for dreaming. The longer they were in stasis,
the more it lowered their intelligence and impaired cerebral functions.
To preserve thought capacity, five hundred superintendents were cycled through cryosleep, so their dreams could be projected to those in cryostasis. The volunteer superintendents gave them life, structure and meaning. In the not-flesh of dreams, they also changed the world above them.
###
When there aren’t any worms, bugs or viruses to explain the mysterious log-on, Silvana looks for a parasite. She shuts down the voluntary systems to track Phoebe’s involuntary functions and studies the information.
Red code flashes and scrolls quicker than she can follow. Then something grabs her attention. It’s a string of foreign characters piggybacked to a log-on, which starts vanishing as soon as she perceives it.
She tries freezing the screen and isn’t quick enough. The parasite is gone and so is the second log-on.
###
After clearing the cryo-complex of compromised integrity, Silvana downloads satellite images of the snow veiling the world. All is lost, buried, beneath featureless peaks and drifts rimed with glittering ice, except for the Central American village where she is able to block the snowfall.
She types Pantera’s coordinates, but the view has to be magnified several hundred times before the lush growth of a rainforest appears on the nearest monitor, the sole spot of green in a world the color of death.
It is where she was reborn and where she needs to go. If there’s trouble there, so be it.
In the not-flesh she can fight.
###
No one knew that cryosleep would release the dreamers’ auras, freeing them to manifest, not in the virtual reality designed by the scientists, but in the extrasensory dimension controlling the world at large. It was a process of rebirth, where some acquired god-like powers, and Silvana’s is not the least of them. They call her Daughter Storm.
###
Silvana leaves the vault and returns to her cryo-unit. Stepping in, she adjusts her program and sets it on manual override. Until Phoebe can be trusted, she’s not taking any chances.
“Please, please,”the computer says. “R-r-rec-comencing sequence.”
“Hush,” Silvana says. “I want you to run diagnostics until I wake again. Fix the speech impediment. If you can’t, then tell me what caused it.”
She lies on her back and closes the cryo-ceiling, thinking about the intruder. Her father wouldn’t have come here, nor do her siblings have such power. They’re constrained to the village he made for them, just as Silvana is.
She types in the coded sequence to inject a sedative before engaging in cryosleep. It makes going under less painful, less like death and a little less frightening, but she still feels the cold. Her skin burns and prickles as her body grows heavy and sluggish. The dark gorge of her aura swirls free
like a rushing river.
###
In the not-flesh, Silvana arrives at the house of worship, a domed wooden building with arches and soaring ceilings, set on a verdant hill apart from the homes of the people. The villagers painted the church with snowscapes. Mica makes them sparkle.
She holds out her hands to the families who have come with handmade offerings: baskets, woven garments, pottery and paintings.
Eyes the color of ochre track tears on brown-skinned faces.
“What’s wrong?” Silvana asks.
A woman wipes her nose on her hand. “A beast is hunting our children.”
Silvana strokes the woman’s hair then gathers her in a hug. Here, in the not-flesh, she knows her people are barren. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
A man kneels and grasps her skirt. “Will you save them?”
“Yes,”Silvana says. “I’ll do whatever I can.” She knows of only two who manifest as beasts. The culprit can’t be her father, but she needs his permission to kill. She takes a machete from one of the villagers then heads for the ritual pool.
###
At the edge of the rainforest, where deep, murky waters form a graveyard of want and need, Silvana strips to her underclothes to perform her ablutions. She immerses herself in the pool that is home to Water Child, long hair fanning out, her feet sinking in sludge.
The water leaches at her being, sifting through her thoughts and assessing her beliefs.
She shudders for good reason.
The villagers once came here seeking miracles and god-gifts from her long-estranged father, but, no matter their need or nature, they were swallowed by the water.
It is a live and murderous thing, testing motives, making judgments, impervious to pain and even less rewarding of virtue. Innocence saves no one, though purity is sacred as the measure of light’s true power.
The spark of a newborn babe is stronger than Sister Sun. The wondering eyes of a child shine brighter than Brother Moon.
She teaches this as truth, but here is what she knows.
In the village of Pantera, where her family is worshipped, there is never-ending hardship. Benevolence comes at a cost, and life is not what the lore teaches as innocence protected. Her father does not gain strength from the naiveté of newness. Rather he thrives on struggle, particularly when innocence would remake the world in its image. Disillusionment and defeat rebirth determination. Death comes swiftly to those who give up trying.
Like the villagers who drowned here, in the pool that ripples with pleas, smothered loss and dreams.
Like she, too, could be a victim for trying to save their children.
Darkness gathers in whorls as she crawls out of the pool into the overgrown grass. Steam licks the trees, ancient, vine-looped. Their roots overtake the landscape, breaking earth in twisted schemes. Three levels of foliage conspire to hide the stars. The birds fall silent, as do the beasts. Silvana inhales the humidity beading on her face and skin. The smell of mulch coats the back of her throat, musty, muddy. Frenetic insects race in a circle around her feet.
Silvana listens, waits.
A breeze carries his voice, whispering sibilant sorrows, remorse, disgust, regret. Disgust hurts the most.
She draws a shuddering breath. "You said I must never come." Why, she doesn’t know.
"But you have, after all." Her father slips free of the shadows, feline, feral, a panther the color of snow. Eyes like lapis lazuli regard her without love. "And you chose not to change."
The words hang on the air, unshaped by her father's mouth.
Silvana drops her gaze. She could have come as Daughter Storm, bringing chains of lighting, hurricanes and hail, but she denied herself protection so he might at least respect her.
Instead, he is unsympathetic. "There are lives you would save."
"Yes." The desire of her heart expressed in a single word—a reason to rebel, as Silvana always has. She’s been the keeper of the lore and the priestess of false hope. But no storm has harmed the village since she grew into her power.
From necessity she kneels, her legs too weak, her nerves too taut. "Mario feeds on the village children.” Her voice cracks, falters. “I come for
permission to kill him."
A wave of electric current thrums over her skin, punishing, searing. Silvana gasps. "My need—"
"Is greater than it was. Kill him,” her father says. “But I forbid you to change again."
Tearful, she rises. Outcast. Stripped of power. Against Mario of all creatures, who is worse than Water Child.
###
Born of fire and cold when the elements fought for the world, her father neither loves nor hates, but does what he must to control.
Because vice makes him weaker, what he needs from her is courage. In sacrifice lies virtue. Through faith he gains power. Before he gave her nothing to defend the lore of Pantera. Now he has taken from her to make the battle harder.
Silvana feels his judgment as she steps back into the water.
Her limbs have the weight of selfishness. Her heart covets. She flounders.
Bones stir in the deeps as skeletal fingers reach for her. The dead cry out lost needs.
My son, my only son.
My wife.
My brother.
My baby.
Heal me.
Help me.
Save me.
She tastes their bitter pain. Their agony dulls her sight. Burdened with untold failures, she claws and kicks toward shore as the water becomes
frigid.
Around her legs, the current swirls, trapping them like arms. She pants, gulping breath, before it drags her down.
The cold stings, so many pinpricks in her eyes. She squeezes them closed, descending, pressure in her ears.
“Surrender,” says Water Child. “Not that it will matter.”
His voice is a series of wavelets, lapping at her skin, each surge impossibly colder, turning her limbs brittle. The breath she holds is explosive.
Her fingers snag on a trailing vine and for seconds she opens one eye. She exhales a stream of bubbles, trying to get her bearings, then pulls hard at the vine, lurching hand over hand, kicking, suffocating. She sucks in water and chokes, but her feet brush higher ground.
Pushing, she breaks the surface then throws herself at the bank, coughing out brackish water that burns, smelling of leaf rot. Like a wind chime of sticks, her teeth clash together.
Mosquitoes descend in clouds as she finds and dons her clothes. Sounding their tinny war cries, they plague her with bloody welts. Even in the not-flesh, there is hurt, pain—and possibly true death. But her blood is repulsive; the attack does not last long.
Silvana gathers her hair to wind it behind her head. Then she steps into her sandals, retrieves her machete and retreats through the rainforest where cuttings frame the path.
She passes through tender fronds that brush against her arms in shades of yellow-green and twists away from stalks with broad, glossy leaves. Wary of soundless serpent coils, spiders and poisonous frogs, she walks in a half-crouch, her eyes ceaselessly searching. Birds trill and flap their wings, preening but sometimes warning. Something large rattles the underbrush. Its snarl raises gooseflesh.
Silvana backs away.
A black jaguar emerges, gray-flecked and spotted, with eyes of molten amber.
Her heart stutters as she holds the machete tighter.
Mario lies on his stomach, purring a contented rumble. “I have no wish to kill you, Silvana.”
She straightens and lifts her chin. “Then stop feeding on children. The lore demands compliance.”
Mario laughs, an almost pleasant sound, like the gusting of wind through trees relieving a hot summer day. “The lore is the path to power for those whose eyes are open. Consuming the children makes me stronger but also weakens your father, who has shackled us to Pantera and would limit our range forever.” He stands, twitching his tail. “Did you lose family in the storms? How many did you abandon to be where you are now?”
Silvana hefts the machete, steeling herself to use it. “I would save the world if I could, but I can’t let you go on killing.”
“Ah, Silvana.” Mario waves a paw in dismissal, his words impatient and scornful. “Do you imagine you can hurt me?” He begins to circle around her, his gaze locked on hers.
She turns to keep him in sight, the machete held out between them. “What do you want?”
He slinks into striking range. “Your power.”
Weight presses down on her eyelids. Her skin flushes scarlet. Heat suffuses her brain, distorting perception and judgment. Still, she asks the question. “Why?”
Mario closes the gap between them. “Because I left brothers, children, and it isn’t too late to save them.”
Silvana closes her eyes in anguish. “Don’t you think I want to?”
“How can you, if you’re not allowed to change?”
The machete shakes in her hands and dizziness blurs her vision. Her knees smack the earth. Sharp pains shoot up her thighs and lance into her hips. Her heart slows, every beat a ponderous note in a rhythm of deep distress. Head bowed, she clutches the grass, trying to stay upright.
Mario’s paw slaps her, knocking her onto her back. His body crushes her chest. Hot breath washes over her neck.
Her heart continues beating after he rips at her throat. Long enough to feel pain and smell the iron wash of her blood. Enough to watch him feed and realize she isn’t dead.
###
White-hot terror sears her nerves and shocks her mind. Unconsciousness eludes her, though the pain is unendurable. To stop it she’d offer anything.
Murder.
Mind rape.
Massacre.
But these are lies, all of them.
She throws her arms around Mario’s neck, desperate to finish her death and, as his muzzle brushes her throat, their auras are torn from the world.
Silvana is slammed back into her body with the force of a violent wind. In the underground cryo-compound, her body is warm and pliant. Somehow
Mario is gone.
She pushes the panic lever, frantic to get some answers. “Phoebe?”
“Yes?”
“Did you cancel my override?”
“No.” the computer replies. “Cancellation was unnecessary because life-support is involuntary.”
“You’ve stopped stuttering.” Silvana gingerly touches her throat. “Did you figure out what caused it?”
“Yes. There was no other way to tell you that someone tampered with my systems.”
Silvana nods her head. It should have already occurred to her that whoever planted the parasite would have erased his trail and made it all
but impossible for Phoebe to give him away. “I assume the offender was Mario. What did you do to him?”
“He has returned to his cryo-unit, where I placed him in cryostasis. I also retrieved your father, to deliver the same outcome.”
“Why, Phoebe?”
“His decrees have lost their force. You are now free to change.”
Silvana grows dizzy, just thinking of possibilities. “We keep six million souls from literally losing their minds. But in the not-flesh we changed a village. Was Mario right? Can we do more?”
“Go and see,” the computer says. “For some it’s not too late.”
###
Returning to the not-flesh in the glazing of cold morning, Silvana spreads her arms and soars above the frozen world as a heavy, driving downpour
with the heat of newfound hope.
Not that lobbying mattered by 2017, when the Ice Age began in earnest.
There were few ways to cope and nowhere to put the snow. No way to deliver fuel. No way to shop for groceries. People froze, starved or committed suicide. And six million people vanished overnight.
Governments called it the Rapture.
The abandoned knew they lied.
###
As she emerges from cryosleep, Silvana opens her eyes to darkness. For one heart-pounding moment, she fears she’s been blinded, but then she perceives her aura, glowing like a bruise.
“Waking,” the computer says in a crisp, feminine voice. “Restoration stage nine: tested and complete. Proceeding to stage ten: full consciousness.”
Silvana wiggles her toes and fingers, which burn as if on fire.
“C-c-consciousness restored,” the computer says. “Stage ten: c-c-complete.”
“You’re stuttering, Phoebe. Why?” Silvana frantically works her mouth until the numbness leaves her face.
“I-I’m n-not sure,” the computer replies.
Chill sweat beads on Silvana’s lip and wets the back of her shirt.
The bed of the cryo-unit slides out of its housing, preparing her for discharge. Luckily for Silvana, she’s bedded at ground level, as are all the custodians of the six million people buried underground.
The computer says,“P-p-please w-wait for the remainder of the sequence.”
“Override,”Silvana says. “I’ll get out by myself.”
After waving away the vapor amassing around her face, she unscrews the couplers to ports in her arms and legs. She presses the panic lever, which parts the cryo-ceiling, then scrambles out of the unit, trembling with unease.
Her legs shake as she lurches through the aisle with one hand on a wall, twenty cryo-units tall and fifty units wide. Both knees buckle and
she falls. She pushes herself off the concrete and, wincing, hurries on.
Each wall is part of a maze, hundreds of feet deep and thousands of yards wide. At the first intersection, she trips motion sensors that activate amber glow-rods. Their light leads to the control block, where she passes a retinal scan and lays her hand on an access panel. When the vault door swings open, she steps into deeper darkness, despite the tiny indicators blinking signs of progress on the computer’s banks of components.
“P-p-please wait,”the computer says. “Approaching s-s-stage eleven, s-s-stage ten, stage nine.”
Silvana bites her lip and sits at the only console. She types a command on the keyboard to open the user log then squints as the screen turns brighter.
11:04:17 User 322207754 has logged off.
12:17:01 User 111000876 has logged on.
12:17:01 Multiple users are logged on.
Silvana types a request:
12:18:05 Show all users currently logged on.
A fan whirs into action as hard drives click and hum. The screen remains motionless until she types her request again. Then the computer
reports:
12:20:34 One other user is logged on.
Now that all of her senses function, Silvana smells fresh-cut flowers. On a shelf directly behind her lies a purple jungle bloom.
But that's impossible. Unless…
Silvana rubs at the worry lines furrowing her forehead.
First the log-on, now the flower. Somehow, someone has accessed the facility from the not-flesh of dreams.
###
The bunker was built in Germany, where geographical stability and a rock-solid economy made such an enormous undertaking both possible and practical. But living underground for more than a matter of weeks required a team of global researchers to master cryogenics. There was no other means to save so many people, keep them fit and keep them nourished, for as long as a decade, if necessary.
There was, however, a problem.
Preliminary tests showed that subjects kept stable at extremely low temperatures had no capacity for dreaming. The longer they were in stasis,
the more it lowered their intelligence and impaired cerebral functions.
To preserve thought capacity, five hundred superintendents were cycled through cryosleep, so their dreams could be projected to those in cryostasis. The volunteer superintendents gave them life, structure and meaning. In the not-flesh of dreams, they also changed the world above them.
###
When there aren’t any worms, bugs or viruses to explain the mysterious log-on, Silvana looks for a parasite. She shuts down the voluntary systems to track Phoebe’s involuntary functions and studies the information.
Red code flashes and scrolls quicker than she can follow. Then something grabs her attention. It’s a string of foreign characters piggybacked to a log-on, which starts vanishing as soon as she perceives it.
She tries freezing the screen and isn’t quick enough. The parasite is gone and so is the second log-on.
###
After clearing the cryo-complex of compromised integrity, Silvana downloads satellite images of the snow veiling the world. All is lost, buried, beneath featureless peaks and drifts rimed with glittering ice, except for the Central American village where she is able to block the snowfall.
She types Pantera’s coordinates, but the view has to be magnified several hundred times before the lush growth of a rainforest appears on the nearest monitor, the sole spot of green in a world the color of death.
It is where she was reborn and where she needs to go. If there’s trouble there, so be it.
In the not-flesh she can fight.
###
No one knew that cryosleep would release the dreamers’ auras, freeing them to manifest, not in the virtual reality designed by the scientists, but in the extrasensory dimension controlling the world at large. It was a process of rebirth, where some acquired god-like powers, and Silvana’s is not the least of them. They call her Daughter Storm.
###
Silvana leaves the vault and returns to her cryo-unit. Stepping in, she adjusts her program and sets it on manual override. Until Phoebe can be trusted, she’s not taking any chances.
“Please, please,”the computer says. “R-r-rec-comencing sequence.”
“Hush,” Silvana says. “I want you to run diagnostics until I wake again. Fix the speech impediment. If you can’t, then tell me what caused it.”
She lies on her back and closes the cryo-ceiling, thinking about the intruder. Her father wouldn’t have come here, nor do her siblings have such power. They’re constrained to the village he made for them, just as Silvana is.
She types in the coded sequence to inject a sedative before engaging in cryosleep. It makes going under less painful, less like death and a little less frightening, but she still feels the cold. Her skin burns and prickles as her body grows heavy and sluggish. The dark gorge of her aura swirls free
like a rushing river.
###
In the not-flesh, Silvana arrives at the house of worship, a domed wooden building with arches and soaring ceilings, set on a verdant hill apart from the homes of the people. The villagers painted the church with snowscapes. Mica makes them sparkle.
She holds out her hands to the families who have come with handmade offerings: baskets, woven garments, pottery and paintings.
Eyes the color of ochre track tears on brown-skinned faces.
“What’s wrong?” Silvana asks.
A woman wipes her nose on her hand. “A beast is hunting our children.”
Silvana strokes the woman’s hair then gathers her in a hug. Here, in the not-flesh, she knows her people are barren. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
A man kneels and grasps her skirt. “Will you save them?”
“Yes,”Silvana says. “I’ll do whatever I can.” She knows of only two who manifest as beasts. The culprit can’t be her father, but she needs his permission to kill. She takes a machete from one of the villagers then heads for the ritual pool.
###
At the edge of the rainforest, where deep, murky waters form a graveyard of want and need, Silvana strips to her underclothes to perform her ablutions. She immerses herself in the pool that is home to Water Child, long hair fanning out, her feet sinking in sludge.
The water leaches at her being, sifting through her thoughts and assessing her beliefs.
She shudders for good reason.
The villagers once came here seeking miracles and god-gifts from her long-estranged father, but, no matter their need or nature, they were swallowed by the water.
It is a live and murderous thing, testing motives, making judgments, impervious to pain and even less rewarding of virtue. Innocence saves no one, though purity is sacred as the measure of light’s true power.
The spark of a newborn babe is stronger than Sister Sun. The wondering eyes of a child shine brighter than Brother Moon.
She teaches this as truth, but here is what she knows.
In the village of Pantera, where her family is worshipped, there is never-ending hardship. Benevolence comes at a cost, and life is not what the lore teaches as innocence protected. Her father does not gain strength from the naiveté of newness. Rather he thrives on struggle, particularly when innocence would remake the world in its image. Disillusionment and defeat rebirth determination. Death comes swiftly to those who give up trying.
Like the villagers who drowned here, in the pool that ripples with pleas, smothered loss and dreams.
Like she, too, could be a victim for trying to save their children.
Darkness gathers in whorls as she crawls out of the pool into the overgrown grass. Steam licks the trees, ancient, vine-looped. Their roots overtake the landscape, breaking earth in twisted schemes. Three levels of foliage conspire to hide the stars. The birds fall silent, as do the beasts. Silvana inhales the humidity beading on her face and skin. The smell of mulch coats the back of her throat, musty, muddy. Frenetic insects race in a circle around her feet.
Silvana listens, waits.
A breeze carries his voice, whispering sibilant sorrows, remorse, disgust, regret. Disgust hurts the most.
She draws a shuddering breath. "You said I must never come." Why, she doesn’t know.
"But you have, after all." Her father slips free of the shadows, feline, feral, a panther the color of snow. Eyes like lapis lazuli regard her without love. "And you chose not to change."
The words hang on the air, unshaped by her father's mouth.
Silvana drops her gaze. She could have come as Daughter Storm, bringing chains of lighting, hurricanes and hail, but she denied herself protection so he might at least respect her.
Instead, he is unsympathetic. "There are lives you would save."
"Yes." The desire of her heart expressed in a single word—a reason to rebel, as Silvana always has. She’s been the keeper of the lore and the priestess of false hope. But no storm has harmed the village since she grew into her power.
From necessity she kneels, her legs too weak, her nerves too taut. "Mario feeds on the village children.” Her voice cracks, falters. “I come for
permission to kill him."
A wave of electric current thrums over her skin, punishing, searing. Silvana gasps. "My need—"
"Is greater than it was. Kill him,” her father says. “But I forbid you to change again."
Tearful, she rises. Outcast. Stripped of power. Against Mario of all creatures, who is worse than Water Child.
###
Born of fire and cold when the elements fought for the world, her father neither loves nor hates, but does what he must to control.
Because vice makes him weaker, what he needs from her is courage. In sacrifice lies virtue. Through faith he gains power. Before he gave her nothing to defend the lore of Pantera. Now he has taken from her to make the battle harder.
Silvana feels his judgment as she steps back into the water.
Her limbs have the weight of selfishness. Her heart covets. She flounders.
Bones stir in the deeps as skeletal fingers reach for her. The dead cry out lost needs.
My son, my only son.
My wife.
My brother.
My baby.
Heal me.
Help me.
Save me.
She tastes their bitter pain. Their agony dulls her sight. Burdened with untold failures, she claws and kicks toward shore as the water becomes
frigid.
Around her legs, the current swirls, trapping them like arms. She pants, gulping breath, before it drags her down.
The cold stings, so many pinpricks in her eyes. She squeezes them closed, descending, pressure in her ears.
“Surrender,” says Water Child. “Not that it will matter.”
His voice is a series of wavelets, lapping at her skin, each surge impossibly colder, turning her limbs brittle. The breath she holds is explosive.
Her fingers snag on a trailing vine and for seconds she opens one eye. She exhales a stream of bubbles, trying to get her bearings, then pulls hard at the vine, lurching hand over hand, kicking, suffocating. She sucks in water and chokes, but her feet brush higher ground.
Pushing, she breaks the surface then throws herself at the bank, coughing out brackish water that burns, smelling of leaf rot. Like a wind chime of sticks, her teeth clash together.
Mosquitoes descend in clouds as she finds and dons her clothes. Sounding their tinny war cries, they plague her with bloody welts. Even in the not-flesh, there is hurt, pain—and possibly true death. But her blood is repulsive; the attack does not last long.
Silvana gathers her hair to wind it behind her head. Then she steps into her sandals, retrieves her machete and retreats through the rainforest where cuttings frame the path.
She passes through tender fronds that brush against her arms in shades of yellow-green and twists away from stalks with broad, glossy leaves. Wary of soundless serpent coils, spiders and poisonous frogs, she walks in a half-crouch, her eyes ceaselessly searching. Birds trill and flap their wings, preening but sometimes warning. Something large rattles the underbrush. Its snarl raises gooseflesh.
Silvana backs away.
A black jaguar emerges, gray-flecked and spotted, with eyes of molten amber.
Her heart stutters as she holds the machete tighter.
Mario lies on his stomach, purring a contented rumble. “I have no wish to kill you, Silvana.”
She straightens and lifts her chin. “Then stop feeding on children. The lore demands compliance.”
Mario laughs, an almost pleasant sound, like the gusting of wind through trees relieving a hot summer day. “The lore is the path to power for those whose eyes are open. Consuming the children makes me stronger but also weakens your father, who has shackled us to Pantera and would limit our range forever.” He stands, twitching his tail. “Did you lose family in the storms? How many did you abandon to be where you are now?”
Silvana hefts the machete, steeling herself to use it. “I would save the world if I could, but I can’t let you go on killing.”
“Ah, Silvana.” Mario waves a paw in dismissal, his words impatient and scornful. “Do you imagine you can hurt me?” He begins to circle around her, his gaze locked on hers.
She turns to keep him in sight, the machete held out between them. “What do you want?”
He slinks into striking range. “Your power.”
Weight presses down on her eyelids. Her skin flushes scarlet. Heat suffuses her brain, distorting perception and judgment. Still, she asks the question. “Why?”
Mario closes the gap between them. “Because I left brothers, children, and it isn’t too late to save them.”
Silvana closes her eyes in anguish. “Don’t you think I want to?”
“How can you, if you’re not allowed to change?”
The machete shakes in her hands and dizziness blurs her vision. Her knees smack the earth. Sharp pains shoot up her thighs and lance into her hips. Her heart slows, every beat a ponderous note in a rhythm of deep distress. Head bowed, she clutches the grass, trying to stay upright.
Mario’s paw slaps her, knocking her onto her back. His body crushes her chest. Hot breath washes over her neck.
Her heart continues beating after he rips at her throat. Long enough to feel pain and smell the iron wash of her blood. Enough to watch him feed and realize she isn’t dead.
###
White-hot terror sears her nerves and shocks her mind. Unconsciousness eludes her, though the pain is unendurable. To stop it she’d offer anything.
Murder.
Mind rape.
Massacre.
But these are lies, all of them.
She throws her arms around Mario’s neck, desperate to finish her death and, as his muzzle brushes her throat, their auras are torn from the world.
Silvana is slammed back into her body with the force of a violent wind. In the underground cryo-compound, her body is warm and pliant. Somehow
Mario is gone.
She pushes the panic lever, frantic to get some answers. “Phoebe?”
“Yes?”
“Did you cancel my override?”
“No.” the computer replies. “Cancellation was unnecessary because life-support is involuntary.”
“You’ve stopped stuttering.” Silvana gingerly touches her throat. “Did you figure out what caused it?”
“Yes. There was no other way to tell you that someone tampered with my systems.”
Silvana nods her head. It should have already occurred to her that whoever planted the parasite would have erased his trail and made it all
but impossible for Phoebe to give him away. “I assume the offender was Mario. What did you do to him?”
“He has returned to his cryo-unit, where I placed him in cryostasis. I also retrieved your father, to deliver the same outcome.”
“Why, Phoebe?”
“His decrees have lost their force. You are now free to change.”
Silvana grows dizzy, just thinking of possibilities. “We keep six million souls from literally losing their minds. But in the not-flesh we changed a village. Was Mario right? Can we do more?”
“Go and see,” the computer says. “For some it’s not too late.”
###
Returning to the not-flesh in the glazing of cold morning, Silvana spreads her arms and soars above the frozen world as a heavy, driving downpour
with the heat of newfound hope.
THE ANGEL WHO NEVER WAS
As the world’s leading geneticist, Marie coded the world’s religions into five hundred doses of counter-viral serum before Lucifer launched the Outbreak that destroyed millions of minds.
She and Richard injected each other, and the rest were administered blind.
Five hundred of the Select became unwitting carriers. Her employer found and killed fifty-nine.
###
Mihr’s bed is a drawer in a wall that resembles a shelf in a morgue.
Marie knows she's awake, of course.
Magnetic resonance imaging reports cognitive functions. The girl is thinking but not yet panicking. The low dose of lephanyl she was fed at the start of her interview has produced a slight surge of endorphins without exciting her adrenal glands. By now, her limbic system should be generating emotions that are chemically consistent with low-level euphoria. Whatever fears or suspicions have evolved since her arrival will be muted to tolerance, all of which is necessary for a stage-one memory probe. What's stored for the short term will be screened with subliminal cues that elicit a hit or miss. In the absence of a feedback wave, testing will terminate.
"Shall we commence, Dr. Christos?" Richard turns in expectation as his finger locates the lever.
Marie's silence tells him no.
She presses the mute button to block their intercom. Richard pauses the outbound camera. They both stare at security screens displaying empty halls linked by guarded doors.
Marie says, "You have to decide, Richard."
In profile, he is ugly with features like pendulous rubber. Salt and pepper nose hairs match the growth on his ears and eyebrows. His skull is bald, his scowl pronounced.
The alarm will sound in one minute.
He says, "I brought it, but I can't."
Her tears are immediate, surprising. "We have no choice, Richard. Please."
In her preliminary interview, the girl tested positive in ways that should have been impossible. Unless they fabricate her scan, their employer will kill a child.
The intercom clicks, warning them.
Richard passes her the disk that might well save the world.
###
Red and green indicators blink halting signs of progress as the girl begins to react to subliminal stimuli. The auditory half of the disk is no louder than conscious thought. The visual half was produced with imperceptible shades of black.
Marie fakes the graph while Richard prepares the release. They forget about security until Rivers unlocks and enters the room.
"How much longer?" he asks. Dr. Rivers favors a crew cut and is armed beneath his lab coat.
Marie points to the paperwork. "Insignificant feedback. Zero absorption factor."
"So," Rivers says, "nothing hidden, nothing learned."
"Correct," Richard says. "Either way, no sabotage." He puts the release on a clipboard and holds it for Rivers to sign.
They watch him scribble his name, followed by the date.
0030 A.L.
He dots the A and the L with a hard punch of the pen. It became mandatory in the year 2015. Anything then and before is followed by
B.L.
Before and After Lucifer.
These are the days of the damned.
###
Marie reaches for the clipboard, intending to take it with her, but Rivers brushes her off and presses a switch on the keyboard.
The wall speakers are activated.
‘Twas a cold winter morn, when a tiny princess born… The sound is a woman's voice, filling the observatory.
Richard pales, shivering.
"Interesting," Rivers says. "I haven't been briefed on the symbolism buried in children's books." He flips a second switch.
And the people cried, “Phew! Can no one save us from this poo? Is there nothing we can do?”
Marie's hands are shaking when she ejects the computer disk. She slips it into her lab coat and reaches again for the clipboard. "The fairytale was chosen because the subject is a child."
Rivers lashes out with a backhand that smashes into her jawbone. Her head rocks back and she stumbles, falling against the control panel. He grabs her arm as she flails to recover.
Richard makes a strangled sound as she is handcuffed and dragged to her chair.
"Now," Rivers says, "the two of you will watch while I conduct the test myself."
He sifts through a drawer until he finds the screening disks. One is inserted and activated. The speakers are kept live.
Audience, arbor, angel…
Marie is watching the graph when the line spikes off the chart.
###
Abdiel, Adnachiel, Adramelechk, Afriel…
The names belong to angels. What she was. Who she is.
Amitiel, Anael, Anahita, Anauel…
Chill sweat dampens her hairline and her skin turns to gooseflesh. In the whispering dark of remembrance, Mihr's senses begin to function.
Her nostrils flare at the smell of blood, at the smear of gore on a sword. Heat, bile and iron make her gag on a tide of nausea while pools of offal and vomit deny dignity to the dying.
Mist curls about her wings, clinging to hips and knees. Warriors surround her and the cloud floor rings with chaos. Power shatters the golden skyscape into fragments of fire and darkness.
It is as it was.
Born knowing, she remembers.
###
Rivers dials the output to blast decompression and the pressurized tank in the ductwork effectively gasses the girl, who’s showing signs of alarm. Her synapses are firing at the rate of instinctive defense, quicker than thought and clearer than memory. The involuntary process draws messages from her senses. Every nerve-ending is screaming.
The anesthesia sedates her while they transfer her body to the operating theater, a glassed-in tiled arena with a square, central dais that can be raised or rotated to accommodate access and viewing. Concrete risers outside the theater support three levels of seating.
Marie and Richard are cuffed to the chairs of the lowest. Rivers joins the surgeons. They wear masks, gowns and booties. Plastic goggles and latex gloves are donned while the subject is readied.
A heavier, stronger gas is introduced while they breathe for her. Intubation and lung inflation keep her airways stable, achieving the first imperative of examination protocol. The subject is breathing and non-suicidal. If her body has been tampered with, the trigger is not unconsciousness.
This does not mean she’s undefended.
###
None other than God can go where Mihr goes. She can be everywhere He is, across time and space, in every imagined dimension.
This is the way He made her, the smallest of the angels.
Her power is Truth, her fate is pain. And her life has been spent in readiness, preparing for this day.
###
The surgeons deflect the subject’s nervous system by shunting her neural pathways. Senses and nerve impulses will now feed her left brain to engage her imagination and suspend her in a dream state. The deep memory probe will interface with her right brain.
Rivers stares at Marie through the glass wall of the theater. His eyes are glittering, feverish. His hand depresses a wall switch that activates an
intercom. “Are you praying, Dr. Christos?”
The question is rhetorical. She wouldn’t have tried to trick them if she wasn’t equipped with resistance. Richard wouldn’t have pillaged the archives for a disk that was laughably harmless.
###
Mihr wakes back in the drawer and touches the ridge on her scalp. It’s a thin bridge of tissue, no more noticeable than a hair, but she knows why it’s there. She knows everything.
The drawer is opened and she sees Lucifer, posing as Dr. Rivers.
In the pupils of his eyes, the truth is a dark glimmer. He has taken what he wants.
“Are you impressed?” Lucifer asks. He leads her away from the wall to an office of glass and steel.
“That you killed them?” Mihr says.
She is thinking of thirty-three million, Dr. Christos and five hundred others. The last of the unknown carriers were destroyed using Mihr’s memories.
Lucifer sits at his desk. “The way of the past is dead and the future is where I lead, so why dwell on it?”
Mihr studies him, his angelic countenance. Power coils within him, and with it he is ruthless.
She wastes no more words on the future that crushes her. Mihr has seen love live and die. She has seen hope extinguished.
Lucifer made her a part of it.
To the past is where she goes, to where they fought and cast him out on Heaven’s battlefield. And near the losses that still resonate, she finds the highest hill where she wept at the end of it.
She says, “It is not yet done, Faithful One.”
Michael looks at her, chest heaving and clothes torn, wings and face bloodied. He has thrust his sword in the earth, where she kneels as a
supplicant.
“You must blot out my name. I beg you to.”
“Why?”Michael says.
“To undo what Lucifer has done.”
And because her power is Truth, he does not question her. Michael leaves not even a memory of the angel who never was.
She and Richard injected each other, and the rest were administered blind.
Five hundred of the Select became unwitting carriers. Her employer found and killed fifty-nine.
###
Mihr’s bed is a drawer in a wall that resembles a shelf in a morgue.
Marie knows she's awake, of course.
Magnetic resonance imaging reports cognitive functions. The girl is thinking but not yet panicking. The low dose of lephanyl she was fed at the start of her interview has produced a slight surge of endorphins without exciting her adrenal glands. By now, her limbic system should be generating emotions that are chemically consistent with low-level euphoria. Whatever fears or suspicions have evolved since her arrival will be muted to tolerance, all of which is necessary for a stage-one memory probe. What's stored for the short term will be screened with subliminal cues that elicit a hit or miss. In the absence of a feedback wave, testing will terminate.
"Shall we commence, Dr. Christos?" Richard turns in expectation as his finger locates the lever.
Marie's silence tells him no.
She presses the mute button to block their intercom. Richard pauses the outbound camera. They both stare at security screens displaying empty halls linked by guarded doors.
Marie says, "You have to decide, Richard."
In profile, he is ugly with features like pendulous rubber. Salt and pepper nose hairs match the growth on his ears and eyebrows. His skull is bald, his scowl pronounced.
The alarm will sound in one minute.
He says, "I brought it, but I can't."
Her tears are immediate, surprising. "We have no choice, Richard. Please."
In her preliminary interview, the girl tested positive in ways that should have been impossible. Unless they fabricate her scan, their employer will kill a child.
The intercom clicks, warning them.
Richard passes her the disk that might well save the world.
###
Red and green indicators blink halting signs of progress as the girl begins to react to subliminal stimuli. The auditory half of the disk is no louder than conscious thought. The visual half was produced with imperceptible shades of black.
Marie fakes the graph while Richard prepares the release. They forget about security until Rivers unlocks and enters the room.
"How much longer?" he asks. Dr. Rivers favors a crew cut and is armed beneath his lab coat.
Marie points to the paperwork. "Insignificant feedback. Zero absorption factor."
"So," Rivers says, "nothing hidden, nothing learned."
"Correct," Richard says. "Either way, no sabotage." He puts the release on a clipboard and holds it for Rivers to sign.
They watch him scribble his name, followed by the date.
0030 A.L.
He dots the A and the L with a hard punch of the pen. It became mandatory in the year 2015. Anything then and before is followed by
B.L.
Before and After Lucifer.
These are the days of the damned.
###
Marie reaches for the clipboard, intending to take it with her, but Rivers brushes her off and presses a switch on the keyboard.
The wall speakers are activated.
‘Twas a cold winter morn, when a tiny princess born… The sound is a woman's voice, filling the observatory.
Richard pales, shivering.
"Interesting," Rivers says. "I haven't been briefed on the symbolism buried in children's books." He flips a second switch.
And the people cried, “Phew! Can no one save us from this poo? Is there nothing we can do?”
Marie's hands are shaking when she ejects the computer disk. She slips it into her lab coat and reaches again for the clipboard. "The fairytale was chosen because the subject is a child."
Rivers lashes out with a backhand that smashes into her jawbone. Her head rocks back and she stumbles, falling against the control panel. He grabs her arm as she flails to recover.
Richard makes a strangled sound as she is handcuffed and dragged to her chair.
"Now," Rivers says, "the two of you will watch while I conduct the test myself."
He sifts through a drawer until he finds the screening disks. One is inserted and activated. The speakers are kept live.
Audience, arbor, angel…
Marie is watching the graph when the line spikes off the chart.
###
Abdiel, Adnachiel, Adramelechk, Afriel…
The names belong to angels. What she was. Who she is.
Amitiel, Anael, Anahita, Anauel…
Chill sweat dampens her hairline and her skin turns to gooseflesh. In the whispering dark of remembrance, Mihr's senses begin to function.
Her nostrils flare at the smell of blood, at the smear of gore on a sword. Heat, bile and iron make her gag on a tide of nausea while pools of offal and vomit deny dignity to the dying.
Mist curls about her wings, clinging to hips and knees. Warriors surround her and the cloud floor rings with chaos. Power shatters the golden skyscape into fragments of fire and darkness.
It is as it was.
Born knowing, she remembers.
###
Rivers dials the output to blast decompression and the pressurized tank in the ductwork effectively gasses the girl, who’s showing signs of alarm. Her synapses are firing at the rate of instinctive defense, quicker than thought and clearer than memory. The involuntary process draws messages from her senses. Every nerve-ending is screaming.
The anesthesia sedates her while they transfer her body to the operating theater, a glassed-in tiled arena with a square, central dais that can be raised or rotated to accommodate access and viewing. Concrete risers outside the theater support three levels of seating.
Marie and Richard are cuffed to the chairs of the lowest. Rivers joins the surgeons. They wear masks, gowns and booties. Plastic goggles and latex gloves are donned while the subject is readied.
A heavier, stronger gas is introduced while they breathe for her. Intubation and lung inflation keep her airways stable, achieving the first imperative of examination protocol. The subject is breathing and non-suicidal. If her body has been tampered with, the trigger is not unconsciousness.
This does not mean she’s undefended.
###
None other than God can go where Mihr goes. She can be everywhere He is, across time and space, in every imagined dimension.
This is the way He made her, the smallest of the angels.
Her power is Truth, her fate is pain. And her life has been spent in readiness, preparing for this day.
###
The surgeons deflect the subject’s nervous system by shunting her neural pathways. Senses and nerve impulses will now feed her left brain to engage her imagination and suspend her in a dream state. The deep memory probe will interface with her right brain.
Rivers stares at Marie through the glass wall of the theater. His eyes are glittering, feverish. His hand depresses a wall switch that activates an
intercom. “Are you praying, Dr. Christos?”
The question is rhetorical. She wouldn’t have tried to trick them if she wasn’t equipped with resistance. Richard wouldn’t have pillaged the archives for a disk that was laughably harmless.
###
Mihr wakes back in the drawer and touches the ridge on her scalp. It’s a thin bridge of tissue, no more noticeable than a hair, but she knows why it’s there. She knows everything.
The drawer is opened and she sees Lucifer, posing as Dr. Rivers.
In the pupils of his eyes, the truth is a dark glimmer. He has taken what he wants.
“Are you impressed?” Lucifer asks. He leads her away from the wall to an office of glass and steel.
“That you killed them?” Mihr says.
She is thinking of thirty-three million, Dr. Christos and five hundred others. The last of the unknown carriers were destroyed using Mihr’s memories.
Lucifer sits at his desk. “The way of the past is dead and the future is where I lead, so why dwell on it?”
Mihr studies him, his angelic countenance. Power coils within him, and with it he is ruthless.
She wastes no more words on the future that crushes her. Mihr has seen love live and die. She has seen hope extinguished.
Lucifer made her a part of it.
To the past is where she goes, to where they fought and cast him out on Heaven’s battlefield. And near the losses that still resonate, she finds the highest hill where she wept at the end of it.
She says, “It is not yet done, Faithful One.”
Michael looks at her, chest heaving and clothes torn, wings and face bloodied. He has thrust his sword in the earth, where she kneels as a
supplicant.
“You must blot out my name. I beg you to.”
“Why?”Michael says.
“To undo what Lucifer has done.”
And because her power is Truth, he does not question her. Michael leaves not even a memory of the angel who never was.