Avenging Angels (The Seraphim Chronicles Book 1) Page 6

  Jacobs stepped into the room and made his way to Graham’s desk. At which point Graham stood up and shook Jacobs’s hand. “Colonel Jacobs, how are you?” He moved to the small conference table near the window as Jacobs sat down.

  Jacobs just smiled. He had known men like Graham all his life. In Jacob’s mind they were little better than irrelevant politicians, always full of swagger; either they were sucking up to superiors or looking down on subordinates. No one was his equal.

  Jacobs stood back up and moved to sit down across from Graham who had already taken the seat that faced the door. Jacobs knew it was a trivial psychological tactic to make him feel less secure. However, it did not bother him. He preferred his vantage point. He could watch out the window for falling debris or vehicles with an aggressive posture, and he could watch the reflection of the door at the same time. Graham’s choice of seats showed he saw Jacobs as a threat and felt the need to place himself in a defensible position.

  Graham waited for Jacobs to speak first, another pathetic tactic in Jacob’s mind. “Commander Graham, there’s a problem with the ground transports on my base. I came to ask for your help in the matter.”

  Jacobs grinned to himself. That was how you put a politician in the hot seat. Tell him there was a problem with something under his direct authority without being specific, and then make him wonder why he did not know about it. Graham felt off guard for only a moment. He was sly and he knew how to recover without revealing his own lack of intelligence.

  “To which problem are you referring, Colonel?” He replied in patronizing tone. “There are many issues I’m tasked with managing. Can you be more specific?” His eyes glittered in a snake-like way, while his smile expelled oozing condescension.

  “So…” Jacobs thought. “This is how we’re going to do it today.” It was not the first time Jacobs had to deal with Graham. Dealing with Graham meant figuring out his mood of the day.

  “I’ve received reports over the past several months of maglev engineers with complaints ranging from the flu to serious skin conditions.” Jacobs replied in his authoritative military voice. “It’s becoming disruptive to activities on the base and I can’t afford to have any of my pilots get sick from one of your engineers and spread it around my patrols. Do you even know what’s going on with your people? But more importantly, what are you and the Department of Health doing about it?” Jacobs demanded. His inclination to play nice never lasted long with Graham.

  Graham frowned. He did not like it when people spoke down to him. He thought himself above most others. “First, Colonel, I’m well aware that there are several engineers fabricating illnesses in an attempt to negotiate an increase in benefits.” He lied. “Second, I’ve already been in contact with the Department of Health and they’ve assured me that the individuals in question have been cleared for work. And third, the next time you come up here with outlandish accusations, you’d better have more to back up your claims than alleged reports.” Graham stood up and returned to his desk without even looking back at Jacobs.

  Jacobs’s eyes followed Graham to his desk. “It would be too simple to just kill him.” He thought. “That would be the easy solution.” He stood up and turned toward Graham’s desk. He placed his cap back on his head and stared at the man sitting at his desk pretending to be working until the uncomfortable silence in the room compelled him to look up.

  Graham had not noticed that Colonel Jacobs had taken several steps and stood in front of him as rigid as a steel column. He could feel Jacobs staring down with hard, merciless eyes like the alpha in a pack. He struggled against the urge to submit, but his deep psychological need to feel safe won out over his desire for egotistical megalomania.

  When Graham’s eyes met those of the Colonel, the soldier gave a jeering salute and said.” Thank you for your time, Commander.” Graham had been beaten in the battle of wills. Graham knew it and Jacobs knew it. There was a lesson Jacobs hoped Graham would learn from their encounters. One should never be rude to a professional soldier.

  TEN

  Evangeline took the usual route from her home to the base. She had become accustomed to traveling home on autopilot, often because of sleepless nights due to her nightmares, which left her exhausted. On rare occasions, she would miss a stop or a transfer because she was lost in her thoughts. It was one of those days.

  A young family on the train had drawn her attention, distracting her. The couple was younger than she and Jack, in their twenties she guessed. What grabbed her attention were their two children. Seeing one child per family in Olympus was common enough, but witnessing a family with two children was becoming more and more rare. Two young boys sat on their parents’ laps; Evangeline guessed they were four and one. Both sons were an express copy of their mother, with light brown hair and chocolate eyes.

  Evangeline felt the familiar pang of regret at the choice she had made years before. Looking back, she realized the decision had been born of a sordid combination of self-doubt and desperation.

  After her parents had disappeared, and had been denounced as Dissident sympathizers, Evangeline faced a decision that no one should ever be forced to make: to choose to either never bear children of her own or to become a permanent outcast of Olympic society.

  The bright giggles of the children engaged in a tickle fight with their mother pealed in her ears as her mind went reeling back to the day when she learned of the choice that she had to make as the daughter of traitors.

  “If you’ll just scan you palm on the tablet, then we’ll be able to proceed.” The woman in the grey uniform from the Olympic Bureau of Administration did not attempt to hide her contemptuous tone.

  “I still don’t understand,” Evangeline said, staring at the display in her hands. “Why I am required to sign this, again?” She sat on the paper-covered examination table in a thin, white surgical gown. She had been preparing to undergo surgery when the woman in grey interrupted the nurses and ordered them out of the room.

  The nameless state employee put her hands on her waist and pursed her lips, letting a sigh whistle out her nose. The disdain in her eyes seared down on Evangeline, who was still in shock at what she would be required to do before the doctors could begin the procedure to transform her from an ordinary woman into a TRTV pilot.

  “If you had been paying attention,” the woman sneered like a malevolent day-care provider, “then it should be obvious. You, Evangeline Chapel-Boyd, are the daughter of traitors. As such, you and your future posterity have been deemed a threat to the security of Olympus and the Quorum. Your future privileges on Olympus are contingent upon your agreement to forsake your procreative abilities in order to ensure your rebellious upbringing doesn’t follow you into future generations.”

  The tears rolling down Evangeline’s cheeks kept time with the tapping of the woman’s high-heeled shoe as she grew impatient with Evangeline’s hesitation. Evangeline’s hands trembled. She felt the sting of abandonment all over again. More than anything she wished to wake up from this nightmare and run into her parents’ room to find them eager to reassure her it was all a bad dream.

  She turned to her husband, Erik Boyd, the man she loved, for support. His eyes showed sympathy, but she knew his allegiance was to Olympus. She knew in her heart he would recoil at the idea of abandoning his life of privilege to follow her into the LTZ, to scrape out a living on whatever manual labor they would be fortunate enough to obtain.

  She felt the wave of worthlessness consumer her again. If only her parents had taken her with them. If only she had been older, she could have joined the Dissidents as well. If only she had never been born she would not have been subjected to such misery and humiliation. If only she had been a better daughter, they might not have left her behind. If only...

  With a quiet sniffle, she raised her quavering hand to wipe away the tears streaming down her face. She took a deep breath and placed her palm on the cold surface of the tablet. Tremors emanating from her lower back threatened to eliminate what l
ittle composure she still possessed.

  The woman in the grey uniform donned a triumphant sneer below her scathing eyes. “Now, if you would read the agreement aloud…,” she let out a small breathless laugh. “For the record, of course.”

  Evangeline’s eyes focused on the words on the display highlighted next to her down-facing palm. She scanned the passage several times before she had the emotional strength to utter them without breaking down into tears.

  “I, Evangeline Chapel Boyd, do hereby willingly and voluntarily agree to have my uterus and ovaries removed, to be replaced with synthetic hormonal regulation systems as a sign of my allegiance to Olympus and the Quorum of Zeus.”

  The woman in the grey uniform swiped the tablet out of Evangeline’s hands before the falling tears could splatter on the screen. She marched toward the door and turned, a false grin blooming across her face. “Congratulations, Officer Boyd. On behalf of the entire Olympic society, we thank you for your loyalty.”

  The door slammed shut behind her and the silence echoed throughout the sterile room. Erik, who had remained silent during the exchange, stood and walked to the side of the examination table.

  He took one of her hands in his and stroked her back with the other. She could not look up at him. She could only stare at the door and mourn as the state employee carried away her future. A torrent of emotions swirled in her mind and smothered her heart.

  She tried persuading herself it was all for the best. She knew if she had not agreed to the procedure she would have been branded an outcast for the rest of her life, and her future children along with her. Even if she managed to provide some kind of decent living for them, they would never be able to live more than a meager existence in the LTZ.

  She also tried to tell herself that she would not have wanted to burden her children with her abandonment issues fearing they would have resented her for growing up in a world in which they were shunned as the descendants of traitors.

  Her husband squeezed her hand and kissed her on the cheek. “It’s for the best,” Erik whispered. He left Evangeline alone in the room to tell the nurses that surgical preparations could resume. She had no inkling that in a few short years she would be divorcing Erik and returning to her maiden name.

  Anguished, Evangeline wondered at her muddled thoughts that were now beginning to surface after fifteen years of repression and denial.

  She had a wonderful husband, who was fantastic with kids, and not just the virtual ones. Jack had grown up in the LTZ as a normal child who had played with other normal children; he knew how to talk to them without talking down to them.

  Most parents in Olympus had Angel nannies like those who had taken care of Evangeline in her own childhood. Alternatively, many families had virtual nannies, like the ones Jack designed, to monitor older kids who were more independent. She knew if she wanted to, she could go back to a fertility clinic and explain her condition, to get on a waiting list for an Angel to volunteer to give up her reproductive organs. However, the children from that womb would not be hers biological offspring. They would not be a blending of Jack and herself.

  When the young family began to gather their belongings and exit the train, Evangeline realized she had gone several stops beyond the base.

  Frustrated at herself, she had no choice but to stay in her seat until the next stop, when she would have to exit the train and move to the other side of the platform to wait for the next train heading back in the other direction.

  This delay would only make her arrive about thirty minutes late, but she was frustrated nonetheless. She was taking on a new trainee fresh out of the simulators. Her hands were going to be full, and she did not need her mind to be a bowl of emotional spaghetti.

  While the train glided back toward the base, she was able to pull herself together and regain her composure. She pushed the unpleasant memories and feelings down deep, back into the sinkhole on the barren moon where they belonged.

  On the other end of the train car, she noticed three Angels standing together. As they rode to their destination, they all sat smiling to themselves and at other passengers or looking out the window. One was petting a dog standing next to an elderly man.

  Evangeline watched them for a while and then discovered something she had never taken notice of before. She realized she had never seen Angels engaged in conversation by themselves. The one Angel petting the dog was talking to its owner, then the other Angels joined the conversation, each one petting the dog when it expressed interest in them. However, once the elderly man left the train, and there was no one else around them, they resumed their polite smiles and looked out the window.

  Evangeline remembered the many mornings as a small child when she would wake up and find Crystal staring out the window. She had always looked out the window when she was by herself.

  Evangeline continued observing the Angels as the train glided along the tracks toward the base. Again, she witnessed them smile and converse with people who sat near them, but if there no one was around, they would simply stand there, smiling their empty smiles or gazing out the window with their unfocused eyes. Evangeline could not solve the puzzle of the Angels’ peculiar habits, nor did she have the time. The train reached the station at the base and she was in a hurry to get into her flight suit before roll call.

  She walked passed the Angels in one last attempt to observe their behavior up close. They each looked toward her, and smiled, wishing her a beautiful day as she disembarked the train.

  Walking in brisk double-time, she approached the security checkpoint of the base, and stepped into the body scanner. As it rotated around her several times, her eyes avoided the display at the guard station as the scan reached full resolution. Though she tried not to look, she could not help herself. The digital representation of her body bore the same scars that were etched in her own flesh where her womb used to be. There was the home that none of her children would ever know.

  “All clear, Captain.,” the security guard said with an informal salute of his hat. “Be safe out there.”

  The guard’s words yanked Evangeline out of pondering her barrenness. She picked up her belongings and continued to march into the base. In mid stride, she stopped and turned to stare toward the train station platform. A thought concerning the strange Angels entered her head, which she felt compelled to say aloud.

  “Maybe they just don’t have anything to say.”

  She stood for a minute, musing over the idea with her arms folded across her chest. She reflected that too many people spoke non-stop but in reality said nothing of value. She shrugged off the errant thought and continued on her way. She did not have time to muse. She was late, and Jacobs discouraged the kind of tardiness brought on by sudden emotional upheavals on the train.

  ELEVEN

  “It doesn’t appear to be any kind of rash I’ve ever seen,” Nathan said to himself. “Hmm. Nurse Vasquez, would you hand me my lenses, please?”

  Olivia Vasquez reached across the bed to retrieve Nathan’s visual diagnostic device. He worried that moving his hands to retrieve them himself would risk further damage to his patient’s wounds.

  The specialized lenses linked his visual cortex to the scanning devices above the examination table. He activated each control with simple eye movements, which targeted each scanner to the best angle to examine his patient and make a diagnosis.

  Dr. Nathan Park was the head resident at the base infirmary. His patients were all either workers on the base or the nearby maglev station. The man before him on the examination table, Frank Roster, was one of the engineers who worked under Colonel Jacobs.

  Frank had come in before his shift to have some mysterious red spots on his arm checked out. The nurse practitioner on call had identified it as a rash and gave him some ointment, clearing him to go back to his assignment on base. What had started out as mild, blotchy red patches on his forearm in the morning now resembled an over-cooked pizza slashed with a knife.

  “Doc, it itches like crazy,
” Frank moaned through gritted teeth. His fingers clawed at the exam table while he rocked his head back and forth in fevered agony. “Can’t you do something about it?”

  “Without knowing what I’m dealing with,” Nathan replied without looking away from the wound, “doing anything might make it worse.” He continued to examine the festering wound. With the help of his lenses, the monitor displayed a magnified holographic version of Frank’s arm.

  “You say it itches. But does it hurt?” Nathan asked with a clinical, yet compassionate tone. “How much pain are you in?”

  “Not much pain,” Frank groaned as he clenched his eyes shut with his head bowed into his chest. “It comes and goes. It mostly just itches. A lot.”

  Nathan placed Frank’s arm back on a tray suspended from a ceiling mounted swing arm. He stood up and removed his lenses to examine the enlarged holographic display attached to the wall. “The scanners aren’t able to identify any known bacteria or viral infection,” Nathan said. He turned around to face his patient. “I’d like to get a second opinion, though.”

  Frank nodded his tortured acceptance and Nathan pressed a button on the wall console. “Amy, would you ask Dr. Abraham to come down here please? Tell him I need his expertise on a diagnosis.”

  A voice responded. “Yes, doctor.”

  Nathan turned and addressed the nurse. “Olivia, let’s spray some local anesthetic and an analgesic on the wound to make Mr. Roster more comfortable. Then let’s sterile wrap his arm until Dr. Abraham can consult on this.”

  The nurse gathered sprays and gauze from the cabinet behind the exam table while Nathan turned his attention back to the restless man bouncing on the table.

  “Mr. Roster,” he said, attempting to sound as reassuring as possible. “We’re going to do everything we can to treat you. You just try to relax. We’re going to take good care of you.”

  Olivia prepared the sprays and sterile bandages while Nathan walked out of the room making notes on Mr. Roster’s chart. He walked down the hall to the nurse’s station, positioning himself to intercept Dr. Abraham on his way to the exam room.