Manifest (The Darkening Trilogy)

-For my parents and family-

©2013 Jonathan R. Stanley

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Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge my parents for their generous financial and emotional support which gave me the opportunity and freedom to pursue my passions.  I would like to thank Debra and Rebecca for their unceasing moral support and for always helping me to remember who I am.  I would like to thank Russ for all of the adventures and also for keeping me grounded and to Randy for reading my works and giving me the periodic kick in the butt I needed.  I would also like to thank my second family, Kim, Stan, and Joanna for taking me in as their own, my grandfather Stanley for his mentorship and guidance and most of all Allison for her companionship, love, and for all the things she has done for me for which I am grateful in a way that words cannot express.  Lastly, I would like to thank my faithful friends who supported my dream and found their way into these pages.

“And men loved the darkness rather than the light, for their deeds were evil.”  - John 3:19

“
A
re you going to kill me?” I asked her.  We had come to a stop at the entrance of a grimy old diner.  A recent rain clung to the windows. 

She looked genuinely concerned.  “Why on earth would I do that?”

“You wouldn’t be the first to try tonight…”

“I saved your life so you could live.” 

I put my hands in my pockets and looked sideways at the diner.  “Why are we here?  I’m not really hungry.”  Not an hour ago, I was livestock for a sociopathic cannibal.  The blue plate special with a side of newly-acquired-moral-vegetarianism didn’t sound very appetizing. 

“Coffee?”

The thought nauseated me.

“And we need to talk.”

She held the door for me and I hugged my arms to my body as I passed.  I had gained great insight into victimhood, violation and degradation.  I felt vulnerable to everything around me, even to the air. 

“Why are you helping me?” I asked my strangely unassuming rescuer.  “You are helping me right?”

“Yes,” she nodded and we took a booth in the middle of the vacant seating area.  “Have a seat before you fall down.”

I slumped into the booth and the frayed seat cushion let out a long sigh.  I stared at my quivering hands.  They stared back for a moment before I leaned forward and buried my face in them.  From the darkness they afforded me, I heard a menu get placed in front of me, a cup turn over and some coffee pour.  I waited till the waitress had surely left and then snuck a peek between my fingers.  “What happened to me tonight?”

Sitting across from me, the woman, Alice, seemed completely dispassionate as she took off her thin suede gloves and pea coat and set them to her side.  She had the air of a person conducting business with a client she didn’t need.  I knew that look because I was a master at it.  I had made my fortune with it. 

“I won’t lie to you…” She took a slurp of hot slurp of coffee, gave it an approving look, and then set down the mug.  “Something terrible.”  Yet when she looked at me next – made eye contact with me – her face was no longer cold and calculating, but discerning and kind.  For a flash, her middle-aged features grew much older.  I never knew my grandmother, but I suddenly felt as if I was looking at her and that she loved me.  “Luckily,” – she dragged out the word while pulling out a napkin from the dispenser and dabbing carefully at her lipstick line – “it’s not the end.” 

She was stunning in that instant but I shook it off.  “So what happens next?  I can’t go back to my life.”

“Mmm, that is true.  But you do have choices.”

“What choices?”

“All of them, wouldn’t you think?”  At that she cocked her head and she seemed twenty years younger.  She looked like an actress taking on new personas, completely believably transforming herself at every move and yet still somehow the same.  I blinked and it was gone.

She was right, though.  What else besides my sister, and my desire to remain alive, did I have to sway me?  And yet somehow I didn’t feel particularly
liberated
.  I had escaped the cannibal but my sister, Sabetha, had not.  Then again, it seemed like Sabetha was more in danger of getting married, than becoming dinner.  “I have to save my sister.”

“And I can help you.”

“Okay, but first tell me who you are,” I demanded weakly.

“My name is Alice.”  It was the first thing she had said to me when we met.  Actually, then she had said Alice
the
sentiner
.

“I remember.  But who is Alice the sentiner and why did she save me from a nightmare I’m still hoping to wake up from?”

“Alice is someone with very powerful friends.”

“I had very powerful friends.”

“Not like these,” she countered quickly.  “We can make sure you and your sister survive.”

“How?”

“Well, there’s a catch.”

Negotiations?  I was a master at negotiating.  “Always.”

“I need you to keep an open mind.”  She reached across the table and created a dome over my hand with both of hers.  Contact was a useful method to inspire trust.

“That big, huh?”

“A big payoff requires a big risk.”  She said it like she was quoting me.  Not very profound, kind of cliché actually, but it sounded like something I’d say when trying to sell someone.  Not so fun when you’re the one being sold.  My stomach quivered and I let out a breath.  “Shoot.”

“The world looks different to you now.  Different than it did a week ago.”

The statement was so simple but her voice was that of someone who saw what I did: no glass without grime, no street without filth, no person without hard years written all over his face, no happiness but the absence of grief, no sterile darkness, just horrors dimly lit...

“You’re trying to reconcile the Viscount and his dungeon with what you know about humans and the laws of physics.”

Also there were vampires.

“You don’t have to decide on what you believe just yet.  I only recommend you believe what you saw.  It’s safer that way.”

I tried to swallow but couldn’t.

“I also recommend you decide on what you are willing to do to save your sister.”

I wet my pallet with some boiling coffee and it scalded me into boldness.  “Why can’t you save her like you saved me?”

“I’m not allowed to interfere.”

“With what?  You interfered to save
me
.”

“That’s different.  I’m inducting you.”

“Inducting?  Into what exactly?”

“The Hyperion.” Like that was a sufficient answer.

“The what?”

She continued anyways.  “You can’t save her as you are.  You need what we can offer you.”

“What if I don’t want it?”  You can’t just take the first deal you’re offered.  You’ve got to find the angle, the fine print, the knife behind her back poised to sink into yours.

“Then you will both die.”

I looked around the diner.  Still empty.  Not even the waitress.  “Why are you doing this to me?”

“Because I need you.”

“For what?”

“To do some good for this city.”

“Fuck, Alice!  If you want me to do some good, get me my job back!  Let me climb the ranks of Cynthecorp.  Let me change the governing policies--”

She reached across the table and put her hand on my mouth.  Her face was fraught with fear, her palm cool and soft against my stubble.  I was frozen.

“It doesn’t work that way,” she whispered and then sat back, her momentary lapse of composure replaced with fortified confidence. 

“Then how does it work?”

“You can only
see
like you see now, once you’re out.  And once you’re out you can’t go back in.  That’s why there is no change.”

“What do you mean no change?  Things change…” but my own voice betrayed me. 

“There will be time for all of this later.  What you need to know now is that I can offer you a way out.”

“Out of the city?”

“No, your current predicament.  There is no way out of the city.”

“No way out of the city?  Pick a direction; there’s no
wall
...  Wait, is there a wall?”

“There will be time, later.”

“Listen, sweetie.  It doesn’t look like I have much of a choice, but I’m not going along without some answers.  We discuss this now.”

She looked at me pityingly, not like she didn’t want to argue but like there was some essential component to the equation missing.  “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

“You’re not ready for it.  If I told you, you
couldn’t
believe what I said.  You’d run out of here and get yourself killed.  For the time being, you need to trust in me.” 

I leveled my gaze at her.  “Why can’t I leave the city?”

“It won’t let you.”

“Who won’t?  Vampires?  Cynthecorp?  I used to work for them you know – not a subsidiary, Cynthecorp Tower, Neo Gothica.”

She shook her head from side to side as it sank.  “I wish you could just see that I am trying to help you.”

I thought about what she was offering me.  Immortality it sounded like.  Some sort of deal with the devil?  Or maybe an angel doing her best to guide a wayward soul.  Either way there was Sabetha, still in the clutches of the Viscount.  “What would
you
do in my situation?”  I posed to Alice.

She thought about it for a moment.  “Probably what I know you’re about to do.”

That put things in perspective.  I leaned forward candidly.  “I haven’t decided on much after getting a gun.  Care to give me some insight into what I’m about to do?”

She pulled out a small square pistol.  It was mostly black plastic with little bumps on the grip and no hammer on the back.  It looked stocky, like a stunted version of a real gun.  I took it from her and hastily put it in my pocket.  It felt small in my hand, yet powerful.

“You’re about to save your sister.”  From her other pocket she took out two silvery clips of ammunition.  “I’ll be keeping an eye on you.”

I smiled weakly.  “That seems to be your thing.”

I made my way to the door, no closer to answers than before I met Alice the sentiner, or whoever she really was.

“Delano.”  There was a tenderness in the way she said my name that I hadn’t expected.  I stopped and turned.  “Yeah?”