If you were there, watching the map of the world lit up behind Dad as he stood with his arms out, you might have thought that the world was united and would stay united - if not in fellowship, at least in agreement that there was no place in the world for extremism or torture. In truth, the divisions began almost immediately. Those who had been in power wanted to stay in power, while those who had been oppressed … saw opportunity.
Dad was not a natural politician. He spoke too frankly for that. But he did know how to get things done and how to ride a wave of popular support; so in just months after he was released from the hospital, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been restored to its original language. Unfortunately, there were those who wanted more. When the effects of the Mark of the Beast vaccine became apparent and Christians became the target of violence, rape, and kidnapping, all sides started making plans … including Dad.
I was eight years old when a man visited our house. He came after my bedtime, but I was still awake, reading. I didn’t need to open the grate to eavesdrop, because the man’s voice was naturally loud and Daddy’s voice got louder the more they talked.
“Everything I predicted three years ago when I wrote the memo has come to pass, Cephas,” the man said. “The effects of The Mark of the Beast vaccine cannot be reversed and, once again, it’s Christians who are bearing the burden. It’s our children who are made to fear for their lives and hide their faces from the world.”
“I know …” Dad said, “… but what you’re proposing goes against everything that I stand for. Aislin made me the same offer…”
“Don’t you dare compare me to that woman! She was a heretic the moment she took the vaccine.”
The man was yelling now.
“I think it’s a perfect comparison,” Dad said.
“You’re proposing the same thing that she did. You dress it up in political speak, but you want to take control of the government and create a Theocracy. In fact, you’re worse than Aislin; you want The Washed to be the new ruling class, and The Marked as a permanent underclass.”
“Who told you that?” he asked. “I’ve never said that in a public speech.”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. What matters is that you’re not denying it.”
“Why shouldn’t we rule? We are the faithful; we are pure …”
“We are done!” Dad yelled.
There was a long pause, as I think they stared at each other.
“We are just beginning, Cephas. I’d hoped you would see reason and join us, but we don’t need you anymore. While you were working with the government, and foolishly disbanding the Four network, we were building our own organization. Our path is clear.”
“I already know exactly what path you’re walking on…” Dad replied, “… when you get there, say hello to Garai for me.”
The man let out a hateful sounding hiss, then stomped out of the house.
******
“What is this place?” I ask.
“This is a Five-X safe house, and I’m in charge. My name is Seth.”
“How did you know that we’re washed?”
He looks at my hand.
“The Marked punch hard, but not so hard that their scars come off.”
I look down, and see that the scar is hanging like a ribbon.
“May I?” he asks.
I nod, so he takes the scar and holds it up.
“It’s alive. How remarkable.”
“Take a piece. It grows quickly,” I say.
People are starting to notice us and come over to watch.
Half of them have tattoos on their hands, like The Guard mentioned.
The tattoos are all about three centimeters long. It’s a cross with an X on each point and another in the middle, for a total of five.
The people start to ask questions, but the man we saved turns to me.
“We should speak privately,” Seth says, and leads us into some sort of command center, where a half-dozen people are working at computers.
“Levi, these three will be joining us. Find them quarters,” Seth says to one of the men, then turns to another. “Pedro, the Temple Guard now has armed drones that shot down two of ours. Figure out how they did it and see if you can replicate it.”
He turns to us.
“Arming unmanned drones was outlawed over a hundred years ago. The Guard has no respect for tradition, or the rule of law.”
“Or the right to walk down the street without being beaten to death,” I say.
“Yes. I’d hoped to talk about that, young lady. You just beat four armed members of the Temple Guard with nothing but your fists and feet. Forgive me for being blunt, but - who are you?”
I get as far as “I’m Joc-,” when his eyes light up.
“You’re Jocie Paulson!” Seth says and all heads around the room come up.
“I should have seen it! The fighting skills, your technical abilities with that scar material, and …”
He turns to Austin.
“… you’re Austin Paulson!” he says, as he grabs Austin’s hand and shakes it. “I knew it was only a matter of time before you’d end up with Five-X.”
“Are you in contact with our father?” I ask.
“No. His disappearance was a surprise to us,” Seth says, addressing his answer to Austin even though I asked the question; then gets a concerned look. “If you don’t know where Cephas is, then perhaps our worst fears are true. He may be in the hands of the Temple Guard.”
“It’s not just Dad,” I say. “Everyone we can think of who was a member of Four is missing. That’s our entire family.”
“That is a very unwelcome development,” Seth says to Austin. “Please excuse me. I must report this to Tyrone.”
“Tyrone? Do you mean Tyrone Bauer, the man who is giving a speech to Congress in Dad’s place in a few days?” I ask.
“Yes. He is our leader,” Seth says, and disappears into a private room.
******
For the next two days, Austin is treated like a visiting king, while Zera and I are largely ignored. We find a large, unused room, and spend time sparring.
“I told you that losing to Austin is just in your head,” Zera says, as I knock her down for the sixth time. “You fight like a combination of your Mom and your Dad - and they’re both deadly.”
“I don’t like hurting him,” I say. “I’m supposed to protect him.”
Zera puts her hands down.
“What about the Temple Guards? Did you like hurting them? I didn’t want to say anything, but the way you laughed was kind of creepy.”
I drop my hands, and then throw Zera a towel to wipe the sweat off her face.
“I don’t know that I liked hurting them …” I say, “… but I know that I felt … free. We’ve been hiding from men with black lines on their faces for so long - it just felt good to show them that I’m tired of hiding.”
“You have a real problem with former Corps members,” she says. “It’s just lines on their faces, Jocie. It doesn’t tell you anything about their hearts.”
We’re interrupted by two girls, each about ten years old, entering the room.
“Were you fighting?” the taller girl asks. “We heard that you fight like a Four.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” I say, and smile.
“Daddy told me that Four was bad,” the girl says. “He said it was good that they went away, because they fought too much.”
“If you don’t learn to fight, how do you keep men like the Temple Guard from taking you away?” Zera asks.
“We don’t need to fight,” the other girl says. “Daddy says all the fighting is going to end soon and then we’ll live outside again.”
“Why is the fighting going to end?” I ask.
“All the bad people are going to go away.”
******
When Zera and I try to find Austin, we’re told that he’s in the command center and we can’t disturb him. We go to the common area, where everyone hangs out. There are three people close to our age, just sitting at a table and talking, so we ask to join them.
“You’re Jocie,” a red-haired boy says. “What’s it like to be Austin’s sister?”
“It takes patience, but I’m surviving,” I reply.
“Who are your parents?” he asks Zera.
“My mother is named Zipporah,” she replies.
The boy’s eyebrows went up a millimeter - he knows who Zipporah is.
“Who’s your father?” he asks Zera.
“My father wasn’t in Four,” she says. “They met after the war was over. He’s dead now.”
“Did the Guard get him?”
“You could say that.”
“What about all of you?” I interrupt. “Were your parents in Four?”
“Certainly not!” the girl sitting to his left says. “Our parents were all among the truly faithful. They were all registered, but refused to take the government vaccine when it was offered to them. They knew they were chosen by God to be saved.”
“God, and the Four vaccine,” I reply.
“They didn’t know they had taken the vaccine,” the boy says. “That’s the mark of true faith.”
“If your parents weren’t part of Four, how did Five-X come to be?” I ask.
“How do you not know any of this?” the girl on the right asks.
“I’ve led a sheltered life.”
“Five-X started when our parents left their false leader and refused the mark of the beast vaccine,” the boy says.
“False leader?” I ask.
“We don’t say his name, but you know who he is. He died at your father’s feet, thinking he was taking vaccine.”
Garai? Five-X was born out of Garai’s organization?
******
I find Austin at lunchtime, surrounded by all of his new friends; so I sit by myself. The boys ask him endless questions, while the girls mostly bat their eyelashes. One look at his face tells me that
he’s loving every second of the attention. I’m studying his face, when his attention shifts to the doorway.
His pupils dilated and he’s blushing slightly.
I follow his gaze, and see that Zera has entered the room.
He likes Zera! I’m going to tease him forever…
Zera grabs a sandwich, walks straight to the table where Austin is sitting, and uses her hip to move the girl who was sitting across from him. I watch the faces of Austin’s fan club. Word has spread that Zera is Zip’s daughter, and they fear her. One by one, they drop out of the conversation and leave, until Zera is alone with Austin.
They talk for some time before Austin notices me and waves me over.
“Why didn’t you sit with us?” he asks.
“When I came in, there wasn’t room; so I let you enjoy your new fan club.”
“You sat and watched me, like Dad. Well, if you’re trying to piece together secrets, don’t bother. I’ll just tell you what I’ve been doing. We started talking about the fact that the Temple Guard has armed drones and I thought we could arm our drones more easily if they were lighter. I told them about the composite material that Dad and I created to make bicycle frames, and they were interested; so I’ve been teaching them how to make it.”
“You invented something lighter than graphene composites?” Zera asks.
“Just a little lighter, but it has other properties that we could find useful. It has virtually no electrical or heat conductance, so it should provide better shielding against stunner hits.”
“Did your new friends tell you that Five-X wasn’t created by old members of Four?” I ask.
“Of course. That’s why Dad is so special to them. He rejected Garai, too.”
I lower my voice even farther
“Don’t you find everyone here a bit odd?” I ask.
“They all seem nice to me.”
Our conversation is interrupted by a tall woman asking for everyone’s attention.
“The speech by Mr. Bauer is going to start soon and I have exciting news. As you all know, Cephas was supposed to give this speech; so instead of giving it inside Congress, Mr. Bauer will now deliver the speech on the steps of the Department of Energy, just like Cephas did after the Traveler’s Initiative.”
A huge screen lights up on the wall and I see a scene that’s quite familiar to me: the marble columns and steps where Dad stood so many years ago. This time, instead of the tens of thousands of people that showed up to hear Dad, there are at most a few hundred.
Two men exit the building and descend the steps together. One is a man that Dad used to meet with often, the Secretary for Religious Affairs. He is a former member of the Corps, complete with a black line that cuts diagonally across his face. Dad said that his name is Anderson, and that he is both a kind and a fair man.
I presume the other man is Tyrone Bauer, because some of the younger people here in the room can be heard saying “there he is.” He is a good looking man in his late thirties or early forties, with the clear skin of The Washed. The pair of them reminds me of the contrast between Dad and Henry Portman when they were both on these stairs.
But which of them is Henry, and which is Dad?
Mr. Anderson makes the introduction. He talks about the rule of law and the fundamental rights of The Washed guaranteed in the Constitution. He promises that his department is doing all it can to crack down on the trafficking of human reproductive specimens.
Mr. Bauer steps up to the podium and takes a long, dramatic pause. He inhales deeply to say the first word of his speech - when his head jerks back violently and he collapses.
Members of the audience, both here and in Washington scream.
The cameras show that he’s still alive, but has been knocked senseless. Armed security guards come out of nowhere, but there’s no sign that anyone in the audience had anything to do with his collapse.
The room erupts into accusations and curses, as it’s presumed that The Marked must have somehow attacked Bauer to stop him from delivering his speech.
I find a screen with public access and start replaying the scene. I watch it from every camera angle, including from drones that were above the area.
“He wasn’t shot with a stunner by anyone in the crowd,” I say. “Nobody raised a weapon.”
“The Feds reached the same conclusion,” Austin says. “They did a medical exam, and all of his muscles were functioning after he collapsed. If he was shot by a stunner, his muscles would show it.”
I lean back and contemplate the evidence.
“What is it?” Zera asks.
“Computer, show a recreation of the scene from the vantage of the speaker podium,” I say.
From his vantage point, there were two buildings directly in front of him.
“Have you two ever heard of ENB’s?” I ask.
“Extreme narrow beam stunners?” Austin replies.
“Are you thinking there was a sniper?” Zera asks.
“It would fit the evidence,” I say. “The pulse from that sort of stunner doesn’t disperse like most stunners and hits in such a small area that it wouldn’t affect large muscle groups. If it hit him on the forehead, it would knock him down, without leaving a trace.”
“Look at the buildings in front of him,” Austin says, and points to the re-creation on the screen. “There were armed Feds on both rooftops. They’d have to be in on it.”
“Computer, magnify the space between the buildings,” I say, and point to the rooftop of another building. “There was a clear shot from that roof.”
“Jocie, that building is over a kilometer away,” Zera says. “The reason the government gave up on narrow band stunners is that they’re only accurate out to about two hundred meters, under good conditions. The pulse is affected by every tiny bit of electromagnetic interference. Those buildings were pumping out tons of interference. Every com signal, every computer, every light puts out a small field that would throw off the shot. The shooter would even need to account for miniscule fields given off by the trees in the courtyard.”
“I’m aware of all of that,” I say.
“You think someone made a precise shot to the forehead through all of that random, invisible interference? Jocie, a computer couldn’t do it. Nobody could make that shot.”
You’re wrong, Zera. There’s one person on earth who could make that shot … Dad.