Chapter 05 (Complete)

When originally writing Sero, I split the novel into three parts that I labeled: Intro, hill, battle, conclusion. Stupid names? Yeah, but they represented what the chapter was to me. I’ll let you guess what Hill, Battle, and Conclusion means… gee, I wonder. Anyhow, here is the last chapter in the Intro Section of the novel. Enjoy!

Chapter Five

She was not a perfect woman. A few strands of her otherwise black hair had turned grey as stress seemed to plague her daily life, ripping years away from her. She could stand to have lost a few pounds, or so she thought, and of course there was the ever present question of the effects of aging. Then, of course, there were those doubts which swam in her mind about her own ability to cope with it all. And yet, she smiled. She never complained and she never let the bad grow to become the worse or the horrible turn into the destructive. In all fairness, Atlas saw none of her flaws, whether they were real or otherwise.

The house stood two floors and just before the backyard, which looked out into the Pacific Ocean, was a large deck. The greatest in appliances, from a barbeque to the housing units the dog slept in during the summers, were there for the leisure of the houses inhabitants. In regards to the house itself, it had five rooms and two baths with an office and a kitchen big enough to prepare food for two families. The dining room was secluded and lit with hanging lights from an open glass ceiling. A long curved edge wooden table made of cherry was placed keenly in the middle, though it saw little to no use. Of all the families, the Atlas family was most private, choosing to entertain themselves rather than being forced to bow to the needs of others, or so they liked to recite.

There were no children in the house, nor had there ever been any. The very idea seemed atrocious by those who actually lived there, from both the humans and canines.  Speaking of the which, there were three. It seemed that at any given time there could have been up to seven, if not more. Eloise was a fond member of the California Pit Bull Foundation, which sought to give those who were condemned by most of society a new life. In her control then, on that day, was an elderly male pit and a middle aged female. As for the third, it was their own. Peanut the Pit Bull had lived peacefully in that house as both guardian and adored family member from the time it had been bought to the day Eloise celebrated her husband’s return from Olster County. His plane had yet to land, however.

On her backyard porch, Eloise sat with Peanut next to her. A smile stretched from ear to ear as the sky itself seemed to open in a brilliant scarlet haze. The sun was just about to be enveloped by the horizon, slowly gnawing away at it until the sky seemed to turn a deepened purplish-red. In the land of Saint Diego, the sun was a God in its own right. Days were filled with a bright cobalt sky and a fiery yellow ball looming above it as a king would his subjects.

There were no clouds and the wind slowly brushed up from the shore, covering the city in a silent yet comfortable breeze. Seldom did the winds grow in voracity, and when they did it served only as a reminder to the people who lived there: the sun was in fact their friend, their God. With a gradient shift in color, the sky behind her turned a dark purple, slowly melting into a bluish-mauve, and finally ending with scarlet and yellow clashing. It was a battle worth seeing.

The phone rang, startling the dog and forcing a sigh from her lips.

“Nor…”

Before she could finish, he said quickly, “Watch it, dear.”

“Sorry,” she replied, “Is something wrong… Atlas?”

He paused a moment or two, wishing he didn’t have to say it. Whatever it was, she already understood and knew exactly what he had to do, which was what he figured.

“Helios contacted me. He informed me that I was to stay in Olster, which is currently where I’m at, until further orders.”

“Is everything alright?” she was quick to ask.

“Never is, but I’ll be fine. I’m assuming that I have more paperwork to do,” he replied, lying horribly. “I’ve been wrist deep in work for the last day now.”

For a brief moment she entertained the idea of tossing the phone across the lawn, praying she could make it all the way into the ocean, even if it were implausible. Nevertheless, she held firm and replied as gently as she could, “You’re suppose to have a two week vacation starting last Monday.”

“Things happen…”

He could hear her groan in annoyance.

“I’m sorry, Elly,” Atlas continued. “I haven’t been able to contact Haden… I lost my phone.”

“How are you talking to me then?”

Holding in a laugh, he replied, “A payphone on the side of the road.”

The day, how nice it had been, was thoroughly ruined in all ways. She lost all sense of happiness and the anticipation which filled her body at the sight of her beloved husband had all but died miserably, and to make it that much worse he did it over the phone.

“When will you be home?”

Knowing the answer was not an answer at all, but rather a lie, he bit down on his lip and replied in false honesty, “Hopefully by tomorrow.”

“Alright then, I’ll see you tomorrow… Atlas.”

“Good night, El.”

Both sides hung up and Atlas walked back to his car, which sat on the side of a long stretched out road. The closest airport was ten miles north, but he wasn’t headed that way. Only hours beforehand he sat on a square metal bench with cast iron legs, awaiting the planes arrival. One by one the people marched by in lines of ten or more at a time. Constantly the sound of a casual beep, the sort which wasn’t an alarm, went off as people passed under the security bars.

Big, finely cleaned glass windows sat on opposite sides of the elevated room and through them he could see both a reflection of the cattle herd of men and women as well as the planes which came in and out. His plane was a special one, one made for State Guard personnel only.

“Atlas?” an odd looking man said, seemingly sneaking up on him.

He wore exactly what you expect a member of the infamously rumored Black Sun Unit would: a pair of Bermuda shorts with an old grey hooded sweatshirt. He was no older than twenty and his face was covered in pockmarks and red blotches. His hook nose hung over an audacious smile, which curled at the ends.

“Can I help you?” Atlas asked.

The young man took a breath and replied, “Helios needs you to go and meet Virgil back in town. He sends his apologies to the both of you.”

Before Atlas could object, the man began to walk away. He wanted dearly to follow and question him, but they were orders given by of all people, Commander Helios. Of the men to question in his line of work it was not Helios or Apollo. Their names alone gave reference not to the gods of mythology, but the power they truly did hold was quite frightening at times.

It was only ten minutes after leaving the airport and getting into his car to go back to the city of Olster County that he realized he had to give the grim news to his wife. And there he stood, standing alone in front of a gas station. His hand hung tightly onto the phone and his eyes aching to see Eloise once more.

Night had fallen once more in Olster County with the presence of Atlas still there. By now, he thought, Virgil was probably in a hotel room sleeping. Conscious dreams of what a bed would feel like loomed in his mind as realization had set in. He went back to his car and sat down, this time on the back seat. As soon as he closed the door and turned the small monitor on the backseat on, the same annoying Japanese-type creature popped up. Its upside down U shaped eyes and constantly smiling face sickened him more at that moment than ever before.

“Is your wife and or girlfriend angry, Mr. Atlas?” asked the creature in a softened voice. “No other reason you’d be sleeping in the car.”

Whether he was generally a social man or not, Atlas hated the constant presence of the creature. It could have been turned off, but unfortunately it seemed Atlas was not the best at such technologically savvy procedures. From the voice of it to the very movements it made, it didn’t even seem cartoony, and it lasted long past his tolerance. He moved his finger across the bottom red bar on the screen until it reached sixty-five degrees Fahrenheit and then proceeded to move another bar, this one labeled safety, to the very end. A small picture of a safe with its door closed popped up, only then to be further secured as the creature tied a chain around it, as though it truly mattered.

Atlas pulled out a pillow from under his seat and laid his head down. The seat under him began to warm as the monitors dimmed and the feint sound of music began to play lazily in the background. His only view now was the sky above, which was covered fully by the windowed ceiling of the car’s interior. There was no rain, but some clouds, sparse as they may be, that moved into a pattern which covered the sky in blotches.

It was a yellow day, but a black night, as most seemed to have been for him when not home.  Certainly it seemed he was plagued at all times in the night by thoughts of Eloise as they found their way into his mind. A light spasm on his bicep, where his Eve unit was located, kicked in and she was there; an oval face with naturally darkened skin, a set of deep nearly-black hazel eyes and a smile just barely cresting at his presence. A few strands of her hair fell down from behind her ear and onto his face, but they simply went through. His eyes closed and yet she was still there. No moon, stars, or the clouds which hung under them, only her precious face. And then it all went black.

“Die Nordsonne stößt wieder,” said Helios, standing before the opened door of Atlas’s car.

With bitterness, Atlas’ eyes opened slowly and replied, “Morning, sir.”

With a smile, Helios gave him a hand and pulled him out of the frigid car. The sun had only barely gotten over the horizon and a fine layer of mist sat in the fields before the gas station. There was, however, not even a single cloud to be spoken of. Instead, there was fog and the aforementioned mist which blanketed the land.

“How did you find me?”

Helios didn’t answer, he didn’t have to.  Instead, in a jovial tone of sorts, he asked, “So how’s your wife enjoying your vacation?”

“She loves it” Atlas responded. “Then again, I think we both wish I was there to enjoy it with her.”            Before he could further complain, Helios said in passing, as though he barely even cared to ask in the first place, “I thought you two lived in Arizona.”

“We do. This is why it’s a vacation.”

The chemicals in his blood hadn’t quite been cleansed and the overwhelming urge to fall asleep came over him, growing more and more by the second. Usually by the time that he woke up, the Atom had already consumed any leftover chemicals, seldom making it possible to wake him up before that. Then again, as he tried to regain his senses, he also came to the sudden awareness that Helios somehow opened his car door without setting off the alarm.

“Virgil is waiting,” he said, pointing over to a car beyond Atlas’s view.

As it was the night before, a sudden darkness came over him. It was the medicine, he thought before ultimately succumbing to the feeling of complete relaxation. The type of sleep attained was nearly cognizant, or so it was then. Sudden and without control, his eyes opened to a shaded world and his breathing began to grow heavy. Helios stood like a statue, yet he could so clearly see him breathing, which could be seen coming out from under his nostrils. With all his effort he tried to raise his hand, hoping dearly for the man before him to notice. The light began to grow dimmer and his breath escaped him.

“Atlas?” said Helios, his head cocked to the side.

With a sudden jerk and a sound like a crack of lightning, he awoke.

“Are you alright?” he asked him.

Virgil, who stood a few feet in front of the open door, said in his place, “Maybe he has sleep apnea.”

Before he could defend himself, Helios quickly said, “No, our medicals examination says he’s perfectly healthy, no major or minor diseases or mental illnesses. He’s using Insomnia Inhibitors.”

Atlas found he was in the backseat of his car once more. Forcing himself up, he pushed against the seat and pillow under his head, and with a clear voice said to both, “I had too much to drink, leave me be.”

Virgil meandered back out of sight as Helios tried to hide his smirk. Atlas pushed himself further up and looked around, seeing that each window had been fully transparent and his front door was open as well. He moved himself out of the car and with his best effort, stood straight. As he gained his bearings and Virgil helped, Helios moved lazily and with a swagger, almost as if he were dancing, toward his own car. It was an exact replica of both Atlas and Virgil’s. Everything given by the State seemed to be similar in most if not all ways.

“Where are we driving to?” asked Atlas as he began walking over.

“Ha!” Helios snapped. “You’re in no condition to drive, clearly…”

“The Atom…” Virgil tried to say.

“We’re leaving your cars here – someone from Black Sun will come by and set a course for them to head back to OC:1.”

Helios ushered the two men forward and into the car. The backseat was immediately filled as Atlas fell into it, quickly closing his eyes and laying his head to rest atop his left arm. As for Virgil, he promptly took the passenger side, once again, and sunk down into the seat.  By no means was the man a very big person, but the seats were fairly different than the ones from both of their cars. Even the inside looked different. There were more buttons and screens, there was no Japanese creature lurking about, and to make it that much better there wasn’t even a steering will. Helios sat down and his door shut automatically. The car started and without having to say a word it began to drive to its destination.

The entire landscape was a perpetual green, from the very trees which sat like ducks on a pond to the verdant grassland and the knolls sprouting up in between. In the summer, when there no clouds, people clambered as though they had gone mad to see the charming scenery and especially the vineyards a few cities over from Olster County. Year around the region was a bastion of tourism. The elderly members of society wanted to see what they called their youth, though it was a general lie. A hundred years before the present, the world was mostly the same with the exception of a few dictatorial changes.

In regards to the youth, there was a growing fad, a love of all things natural and created by the Earth. While it too was a lie and façade in all ways, they came like maggots to a corpse, seeking out nature in all of her glory.

“I love this place,” Virgil mumbled to himself as thoughts of his childhood came rushing in.

There were no deep secrets or mysterious beginnings. He was simply a boy who grew up in the vineyards of California. By no means were his parents rich, but they lived in a decent house in a closed off area, far from anything too urban. That being said, nothing made him happier than visiting the rest of his family in the Bay Area.

“It reminds me of Greece,” said Helios, replying to Virgil’s comment.

“Is he Greek?” Virgil asked himself silently. It wasn’t the first time he suspected the team leader was not a North American. His hair was exceedingly short and trimmed to look like Roman Caesar and his skin was darkened but not to the point where he looked Middle Eastern. Then again, Virgil thought, he had the look about him. His eyes were a dark grey and above all else, his accent, while only slight, was easily detectable.

“I went there when I was with the State Guard,” he said, immediately squashing the idea of him being Greek. “We were trying to settle a few matters that the European Union was unable to settle themselves, i.e. those who were fighting against their control. It was fun.”

Officially, everyone in Black Sun was strictly North American. To even join you had to have been born there, though Virgil figured there were exceptions to the rule. Every other man he saw while at OC:1, the United States Armory for Black Sun soldiers, was dark skinned or had an inflection of sorts. As for Virgil, he was a mutt, or so he had been told. His father’s side had a German, English, a bit of Irish, Scottish, and a Welsh heritage. All the while his mother’s side had a Dutch, Russian, and French heritage. All in all, he was a North American, or so he liked to proclaim proudly.

If there was one bit of knowledge that Virgil knew, it was the generalized age of those around him. It was never told, nor had it ever been asked, but both Atlas and Helios were clearly in their thirties or early forties. While Atlas didn’t look it from a mere glance, he could see the wrinkles slowly coming in from the sides of his eyes and his hair beginning to grow thinner in the back. Helios, on the other hand, showed every day he lived through on his face. His eyes were hawk-like and his nose hung down like a beak.  A scar from a cleft lip surgery shot down from just under his nose onto his thin mouth, which only ever opened to laugh bluntly or inform someone of their obvious mistake.

“You need a haircut,” Atlas murmured, half asleep.

Helios smirked and nodded, agreeing fully. There was no reason to ask who he was talking to. Of them all, Virgil looked as though he was in a band or just getting out of college. He smiled humbly and put his head down into his chest a bit.

“Where are we going?” asked Atlas, still mostly asleep.

Whatever was said would surely have been forgotten, but Helios replied hastily, “We need to have a talk with the Wassermann family. The head of it, Kurt, is an old native and a strict Catholic. Chances are he is hiding some information because he thinks it’s what God wants him to do.”

“Why weren’t we told?” asked Virgil, slightly bewildered by the entire situation.

Just like Atlas, he wasn’t told what they were doing until that very moment. The sun hadn’t even come up when his hotel door opened and Helios stepped into the room. Out of his peripheral vision and a slightly cracked opened eyelid he saw the daunting man with a small bag and a neutral look hanging off of his face.

“Die Nordsonne stößt wieder,” he said.

With a sudden jerk, Virgil jumped from his bed as Helios flipped the lights in his room on. He let out a deep sigh of relief as the familiar face smiled, hiding a chuckle.

“I don’t speak German,” said Virgil, all the while covering his body from his chest up.

“Would you like a bagel? Apparently the local folks here really enjoy their wheat.”

And with that the conversion effectively ended. He took his breakfast and they walked to the car. As soon as it was turned on, the computer screen, where the steering wheel would have been, flipped on and a map came up. It quickly expanded and on the far northern side, near a long road, sat a single blue icon in the shape of a car. In the middle of the icon sat the Black Sun logo; a circle with long spindly points reaching out, the longest being on the north, south, west, and east sides.

Slowly Atlas woke up and by the time the fog had begun to dissipate and the clouds crept in from all sides to ruin the day once more, he was fully awake. The name, Wassermann, was slightly familiar but he had heard so many during his stay he hadn’t any idea who it actually belonged to. As for Kurt, he had never even heard that name in Olster County. It wasn’t often someone of Helios’ importance came all the way out to a place such as Olster County just to question one family. And then, as he sat there and thought through all the names, one came up he had not expected.

“Evelyn,” he said, “did they find her at St. Kolbe’s?”

Though, as he sat there and waited for a response, he came to the awareness that they hadn’t. There was no possible reason for three men, especially Helios, to go and question Kurt Wassermann, whoever he was, if they had found her remains.

“No,” Virgil stiffly replied, still hurt by Atlas’s comment.

After a moment, Virgil stuck his head up like a rooster and turned it back towards the tired looking Atlas.

“Didn’t you get the call from Haden?” he asked.

Before Atlas could say a word, Helios interjected, “The Press tried to get him to say something controversial via a private phone call with his wife. Then, of course, they found his cell phone while sneaking around out back. Thankfully he stomped on it hard enough to destroy anything of value.”

“I threw it against a walnut tree, actually.”

Virgil was quick to ask, “Why would your wife agree to that?”

“Eloise didn’t,” he spat, “they dug into my messages, grabbed her voice, replicated it with some bullshit Press trick they toss around, and asked me a stupid question…”

There was a moment of tense quiet as Virgil held in his laugh and Helios shook his head in disapproval.

“We agreed when I first got this job that we wouldn’t ever ask one another what happened,” Atlas continued. “Well, they asked me how many had died so I tossed my phone at a walnut tree.”

Again the silence overlapped the situation and it all began to fade. Helios continued doing paperwork on his computer while Virgil shifted uncomfortably and stared out into the knolls, watching as a thunderstorm in the fields grew closer. The sky began to blacken not ten miles away and he could see the rain falling like all the world’s oceans onto that one speck of land.

In regards to Atlas, he stared forward and out the front window. It all seemed so familiar, but then most of the land was similar in one fashion or another. Up front, he could hear one of the men giggling, only to lead to Virgil remarking,       “I hate walnuts”.

As they continued on, their destination became apparent. It stuck out like a sore thumb. A mighty two-story house with pallid white walls and open windows, an old American flag hung from porch and two silos sat empty not far off from the building. It was the cliché, the very one which every tourist came to see and take a photo of as though they were relics. The long dead rural America where only the sweet old women and adorably bigoted men lived; a place where technologies only claim was marital aids for horses and to improve machines to check on the health of the livestock.

The road leading up to the house was far shorter than St. Kolbe’s, though it brought back memories for Atlas. Then again, unlike the overgrown and abused fields on the land he first came to, these were neatly kept and in the background he could see farming equipment, as well as about a half dozen men working on or around them.

“Are those the Wassermann’s?” Virgil asked.

No one replied. The answer was obvious enough: maybe. Atlas gave little thought and whatever went through the mind of Helios was not shared by his expressions. He went back to work on his computer, ignoring everything else. On the right, as the car pulled into the main roundabout, a russet-tan dog came running out from the side of the house and towards the car. Before the vehicle could even stop, the dog managed to catch up. He leaped up onto Virgil’s door and began to bark.

“God damn…” Virgil remarked, his breath suddenly losing itself.

“Calm down,” Atlas said, interrupting him. “He’s happy to see you.”

“I’m allergic…”

“It’s a allergen free dog, Virgil.”

It was a complete lie, but nonetheless it seemed to work.

Helios finished his work and turned the car off. By the time he had done so, the owners, the Wassermann’s, gathered to the front, just before the porch. They looked like everyone else in the city. For a moment Virgil expected to see the stereotype he was always presented with, and most of which he did in fact see while visiting the gift shops. It was all an act, he told himself. Of the seven that stood before them, six were men. The seventh, on the other hand, was a real young girl, easily no older than thirteen. The youngest men, or boys rather, were standing around her, as if to try and protect what the three in the car figured was their sister. The two others, the adults, were familiar. They, like the rest of them, looked related.

“You white people all look alike,” Helios said jokingly before he opened his door and getting out.

The dog took notice and shot around, stopping right before the tall individual. His mouth slung open and his tongue hung out, his ears were pointed and his tail slapped the ground. The dog let out a friendly bark and sat down in front of him, all the while panting.

“Is Elijah Wassermann home?” Helios asked, much to the surprise of both men inside the car.

Atlas jumped out, soon to be followed by Virgil, and walked next to their boss. However, before they could say anything, the door opened and an elderly woman came out with her son, Elijah. It was the same man the two had dinner with, the same man Atlas was escorted by at St. Kolbe’s.

“Is there anything that we can do for you?” asked the old woman.

Her hand grabbed tightly onto her sons arm. It didn’t take long for the three men to realize she was either blind or simply refused to open her eyes. Long lines ran down her old thin face, which had gone pale. She was as frightened as she had probably ever been.

“My name is Helios, I was sent by…”

Before he could finish, Elijah stepped forward and shouted, “Yeah, I know you’re from I.I.A. too, right?”

“My name is Helios,” he tried again, “and I was sent by Black Sun to question you about your father’s side of the family and their presence at the St. Kolbe Center.”

That name, Black Sun, it stung Elijah’s ears. Just the mere idea such an organization actually existed frightened him as much as it had his mother. So dearly did he want to grab his rifle inside, but he knew it wouldn’t have done any good. His entire morning consisted of researching the name on the internet. He would find thousands of articles and papers written about them, but most came from the Eislen Massacre Theorists, a small group of conspiracy aficionados. Every word he read of them made his encounter that much stranger, from the mythological names of its members to their connection to the Šero Advent.

“Jeff,” Elijah said, turning to the oldest boy surrounding the girl, “take your cousins and help my mom inside.” He then turned to the two adults, who had walked forward to the steps of the porch, and said, “Go back to work and pretend nothing happened, for the sake of our family.”

The two men, without agreeing or disagreeing, walked down the stairs and meandered off and to the left. Elijah, on the other hand, came forward and knelt down before the dog, petting him on the back and whispering the same inane names everyone did when their dog did a good job.

“Mr. Wassermann,” said Helios, trying to get his attention.

He stood up again and replied, “What was your name again? Zeus?!”

Helios let out a smirk, evening chuckling a bit before answering in a seemingly happy tone, “No, that name was just a bit too ridiculous for even us. We tend to go by Titan’s, but I’m a rarity.”

Whether Atlas felt it or not, Virgil couldn’t help but drop his head in shame as an overbearing sense of hatred filled the air. It was why they said they were from the I.I.A. in the first place. Black Sun was hated by even those who had no idea what they did. The rumors didn’t help them, of course.

“Alright, what do you need to know?” he asked, his voice now fully engulfed in a repugnance toward them.

Helios replied immediately and without any of the joy he had before, “Your parents divorced when you were younger, and according to your brother you’re not a big supporter of your father because he chose his religion over his family. So, why were you with both of them when Atlas was at St. Kolbe’s?”

With a face like a angered dog, Elijah spat back, saying, “I don’t see why any of what you just said, except maybe the question at the end, needed to be said. This isn’t a damn movie; you don’t have to go talking about my family. What about yours?”

“You’re evading the question…”

“You’re lucky I’m even here. If I wasn’t sure I’d wake up tomorrow with my house on fire or full of bullet holes then I would have slammed the door on you. I’ve read all about you people, your history in Eislen. You tried to hide everything that Jack Adlam did to those poor people in the Advent. I wouldn’t be surprised if you killed all those people. You’re the type who’d do…”

It stopped like a train hitting a wall, yet somehow silently. Elijah didn’t even see him pull the gun out; he didn’t even see him raise it up. However, as he stood there, he saw his life. It wasn’t in the form of flashbacks or memories, but rather the fields just past the three men and their car. That was his legacy, but not what he would have been remembered for. He would be remembered as a rumor on a forum somewhere lost on the net.

“Is your father a member of the Šero Advent?” Helios asked.

“My father’s a Catholic,” Elijah replied, taking a glance back at the people in front of him and seeing the shocked and horrified look on Virgil’s face as he looked toward his boss.

“The Adventists consider themselves the remnants of the Catholic faith,” said Helios, still pointing his gun.

Elijah lost his worry and walked away, surprising even Helios, who followed him over to the bumper of the car. He sat on the edge of it and bent down, his hands covered his forehead and his eyes closing.

“My father’s side of the family goes back to an orphan at St. Kolbe’s a real long time ago,” he said with a voice now calmer than it had been before. “I grew up reading his journal like a bible, plus I had to actually read the real bible. That place was holy ground. It was as sanctified as a building could be without having to be renamed Heaven itself.

“Then the Šero Adventists came and told everyone around here, and we’re all the grandchildren of orphans from that place, that they were going to restart it. Their goal was to create a new Catholic Church, one indestructible by the idiocy of man and his almighty machines.”

He paused a moment, rubbing his eyes a bit.

“My mom told me it was our sacred duty to keep the walnut orchard alive and thriving, so my brothers and I, our cousins and their brothers and sisters and cousins would all go and take care of them. We didn’t sell the walnuts or even eat them, we let them fall and left them alone. Our parents would clean the mess up when we weren’t there and then would tell us that God had taken them to feed his angels. And then the Advent became aware of it. That was when we knew they weren’t anything pious. They ate every single walnut, but we still took care of them as best we could.

“My father said that we were to stay out of their way. They were doing God’s work, he would tell us. The women walked around in normal clothes, so did the men, but there was something off about them. They would smile and laugh, they would tell us jokes, and they would even flirt with some of us. Nevertheless, there was something wrong about them all.

“Not long ago, when I was over here working, we saw a new car arrive. It was an old type, the sort you guys would never drive. A middle eastern looking fellow in a priests uniform got out and, after about forty minutes, he and a bunch of others left. Not a single woman was with them. My brother and I went running to check it out, only to find a smoldering mess. We put the fire out as best we could, but we didn’t dare go in. We didn’t have the heart to tell our father, either.”

“Was your father involved?” Helios asked suddenly.

“He eventually found out, but he said he didn’t want to know what happened. I don’t like him all that much, sure, but I still feel bad for the guy. My brother came running here to tell me someone in Olster saw a State Guard officer check into a hotel and that he was heading to St. Kolbe’s. We told our father and we went to try and figure out what happened. We had heard about how the State Guard killed all of those Šero Adventists in Eislen, so we figured the same happened here. We were going to kill Atlas…”

Virgil flinched and his face contorted horribly.

“Any particular reason?” asked Helios.

“I know you didn’t kill them,” he replied. “The men in the Advent did. They were always the ones who looked off, the ones who controlled the women. Just one look and every single one of those girls would start to tear up and begin to apologize.”

By that time, as he walked away from the bumper and back over to the three men, Helios had put his gun away and began to walk back to the driver’s side. Virgil and Atlas followed suit, going to their respective sides and getting in.

“Is that it?” Elijah asked, a scornful look appeared on his face shortly afterwards. “What about the people who died?”

“We’re only looking for one,” Helios replied.

“Evelyn, that’s who you’re looking for… and what about the families of the dead?”

Helios got into the car and before shutting the door he replied, “To hell with them.”