Incident 27 (10 page)

Ev
said to her, “I’ll let you stay with us on one condition. You don’t tell anyone
about this. You can let the Academy know you’ve found me, but tell them we won’t
be coming back right away. Tell them I need more time to think, or something.”

She
nodded reluctantly. “All right. I promise.”

“I
mean it,” Ev said. “You tell them, and we’re done. I’ll never speak to you
again.”

The
hurt in her eyes was almost more than he could bear. “You have my word, Ev. I
won’t tell anyone about your crazy plan. Just let me stay with you.”

To
make her feel better, he smiled softly. “All right, you can stay. And Maya…?”

“Yes?”

“It’s
good to have you back.”

“Thanks.
You didn’t give up on me. I’m not giving up on
you
.”

Arcturus
interjected himself into the conversation. “If you two are done making up, we
really should get going. Zero Grade will be here soon looking for us. No doubt Poseidon
informed them of the situation before confronting us.”

And
with that, the unlikely trio left the area.

* * *

The
Awesome Three were hanging out in Relm’s dorm room. Relm himself sat at the PC,
while Priscilia sat on the top bunk, feet dangling into space. Jorg lay on the
bottom bunk.

“Things
have gotten interesting, as of late,” he said.

“But
not in a good way,” Priscilia reminded him. “I wish they hadn’t cancelled our
break.”

“We
could leave anyway,” Jorg laughed.

“What,
like the traitors? We’d lose our top standing here,” she said.

“The
students who shy away from their duties, forever marred they shall be, until
the darkness consumes them,” Relm said.

“Relm’s
right,” Jorg said.

“What
do you mean, ‘Relm’s right’? He only repeated what I just said, albeit in a
more lyrical form.”

“Doesn’t
matter,” he replied. “If we want to keep our standing here, we’ll have to
follow the rules.”

There
was silence for a moment. Priscilia then said, “Don’t you sometimes wish we didn’t
have to follow all these rules?”

“They’re
molding us into gods. Following rules is simply the price of admission.”

“Yeah,
but think about it. They don’t have all these rules in Zero Grade. If we worked
for them, we could do whatever we wanted as long as we got results,” she said.

“But
we
don’t
work for Zero Grade. And even if we did try to join them, the
Academy would have our asses.”

Relm
suddenly said, “A solution to problems present, though not long sought, perhaps
yet has been found.”

Jorg
sat up. “What are you talking about?”

Relm
pointed at the computer screen. The web browser was currently on a message
board, utilized by gods, that mortals didn’t know about. “Well, I’ll be
damned,” Jorg said.

Priscilia
jumped down and joined him. “Is this for real?”

“Sure
looks like it,” Jorg said. “Zero Grade has put a bounty on one of our traitors,
as well as one of
their
traitors. Anyone who brings them their heads
gets a guaranteed position within the organization.”

“Are
you thinking what I’m thinking?” she said.

“Out
of the Academy gloom we travel, headed to days bright and new, our world now
changing.”

Jorg
nodded. “That’s right. All we have to do is kill those pooslickers and we’re
in.”

Priscilia
grinned like a wolf. “Then what are we waiting for? Let’s go get what we
deserve.”

* * *

Arcturus
led them to a cave not far from Stonecroft. He had used his god-powers to shield
it from prying eyes, much like the Academy had done with Mt. Orleia. No one was going to find it any time soon.

As
Ev and Maya watched, he stretched his fingers, and his left hand burst into
flames. “Cool,” Ev said.

“Just
a little trick Belial taught me. I can only do it with this one hand, though.
And now that he’s dead, it looks like I won’t be able to do any more than that.
Oh, well.” He almost sounded sad about that.

He
led them to the back of the cave where some sort of large box sat. It was very
ornate and made of gold. Four golden rings sat at the feet of the object (two
rings on each side), and two wooden staves, overlaid with gold, ran through
these rings. A cover—also made of gold—with two angelic figures sat atop the
box.

“Here
it is,” Arcturus said. “The Ark of the Covenant.”

“So
this is the thing you killed Heimdall for?” Maya said, not even bothering to
hide the distaste from her voice.”

“I
told you—he attacked me. I was defending myself.”

“Ease
off on him,” Ev said. While not opposed to her viewpoint, he wanted to hurry up
and create a new world, and he didn’t want Arcturus to think he didn’t trust
him.

After
all, in the new world,
no one
would be guilty of murder.

She
said nothing more.

“Now,
then…” Arcturus lifted the cover off the Ark. To Ev’s amazement, a miraculous
golden light emerged.

“Are
you sure this is safe?” Ev asked.

“Perfectly.
I’ve already done this once before to see what was missing.” He took the energy
crystal—or Jar of Manna as it used to be called—and inserted into a slot at the
bottom of the Ark’s interior. Ev had to shield his eyes from the Ark’s brilliance and could just barely see what Arcturus was doing. The crystal snapped
into place, and that was that.

“So
what now?” Ev said.

“Now,
we head into Adlo to get the Rod of Aaron.”

“What’s
that?”

Arcturus
explained, “Supposedly it was a walking stick used by a man named Moses in the
previous universe. Whether or not that’s true is irrelevant. All that matters
is, it’s the second half of the Ark’s power matrix.”

“All
right,” Ev said. “Let’s go get it.”

Arcturus
held up a hand to stop him. “Not so fast. I’m pretty worn out from our battle
with Poseidon. We’d better hold up in this cave until tomorrow. We need the
rest.”

Ev
wanted to get things done already, but he understood the wisdom of Arcturus’
words. “Fine. We’ll wait.” He remembered the last time someone had told him to
wait before finishing an important mission. At the Tower of Babel, after
defeating the skeleton Keepers, Brandon had insisted they rest a bit before
heading up to confront Belial. That was the toughest few minutes of Ev’s life.
He had desperately wanted to go save Maya, but it would have been pointless to
show up exhausted.

* * *

That
night, they built a fire using Arcturus’ flame hand. They sat around it and
talked. Maya sat back against the wall, away from them, but with one eye on
Arcturus.

“She
doesn’t trust me.”

“
Should
she?” Ev said.

“I
guess not. It’s too bad, really. I’m not the monster she thinks I am. It’s
just…sometimes you have to kill people. This world’s a sick place for forcing
such situations on us. Don’t you agree?”

“Yeah,”
Ev said. “This world creates men like my father and the guys who abused Maya in
the Murnau Islands. It has to go.”

“You
know, there was a time when I thought the world wasn’t so bad. But after you
kill so many people, your outlook takes a three-sixty. Did the Academy tell you
what happened to my parents?”

Ev
nodded. “They told me you killed your father just like I did. They don’t know
what happened to your mother. Or, at least, that’s what they said.”

Arcturus
smiled bitterly. “It’s funny, you know? You and I might have turned out exactly
the same if not for one slight difference.”

“What
do you mean?”

“We
both killed our abusive fathers. Your mother, she accepted the necessity of
that act. She may even be thankful for it.

“Mine
didn’t. Despite everything, she loved my dad to the very end. When she saw what
I had done, she went berserk. Before I even knew what was happening, her hands
were around my throat. Motherly love? What a joke. She wanted me dead. Her own
son, the boy who had just committed the ultimate sin for her. All that time in
her womb, all those years raising me—gone, out the window. I doubt even you can
imagine the choice I was then faced with. Either kill my mother—the parent I
actually loved—or die by her hands. Well, I’m still alive, so you know the
choice I made. I ran that knife as deep into her as I could get it. My hands,
already stained with the blood of my father, were soaked in hers as well.”

“Holy
shit,” Ev said. He was stunned by the words now being spoken to him.

“As
I stared down at the remains of what had once been my family, it dawned on me what
I had just done. I was alone now. My world—destroyed. In my childish paranoia I
was convinced the cops would arrive any minute to arrest me. I needed to
dispose of the bodies. We had a space underneath the floor where my dad stored
his porno mags. I pushed Mom into it and closed it tight.

“And
as I expected, someone did arrive. But it wasn’t the police. It was Brandon
Strong. He explained to me how he had sensed my god-potential. Apparently it
had awoken upon killing my parents. That’s how I was able to move my mom’s body
into the next room. She was overweight and I shouldn’t have been able to do
that, but my god-strength enabled me to.”

“It’s
interesting,” Ev said. “Maya said something similar—yet way more
intense—happened to her when she awoke to her powers. I wonder why that didn’t
happen with me.”

Arcturus
held up a finger. “I have a theory. Would you like to hear it?”

“Sure.”

“Well,
the difference between our experiences and yours is that no one with
god-potential was present for yours. I mean, yes, Belial was in the area for
Maya’s awakening, but he didn’t arrive in the immediate vicinity until she
awakened.”

“What
does that have to do with anything?”

“I
was with you in spirit form when you had what should have been your awakening. I
think my presence kept your god-energy from releasing. My own energy acted as
an anchor to suppress yours.”

“Really?”
Ev was fascinated by this idea.

Arcturus
shrugged. “It’s just a theory. But it’s the best one we’re likely to get for a
while. You’d have to ask a veteran god to be sure, and we aren’t on speaking
terms with any right now.”

“Arcturus…”
he started. He had to stop for a moment to plan out his next words. “I’m really
sorry about what happened to you. Now I see why you sought me out. We really
have been through the same thing. No, that’s not right; you’ve been through a
lot worse than me.”

It
was then that Maya spoke up. “Don’t believe him, Ev. He’ll say anything to win
you over.”

Ev
turned around to look at her. “You’ve been saying that all day. Do you know
something about him that I don’t?”

“Not
really,” she said. “I just know his type. He was a member of Zero Grade and a
disciple of Belial.”

“So
were you,” Arcturus reminded her.

“I
was those things
before
joining the Academy. You did things in the wrong
order.”