Chapter 24: Defeat the Contract

A Prince of the Nobillo

Chapter 24: Defeat the Contract

"Project Jericho?" Carak asked as Lindsay picked up the file.

"This is Jerry Cook," Lindsay said, holding up the picture. "And this one, too!" She picked up another one, he wasn't in a stasis chamber in this one. He was standing in the desert, she didn't know where, sand swirling all around him. He was dressed strangely, almost colonially, with his leather vest and off-white shirt. A wide, thick, brown and yellow scarf was wrapped around his neck. Strange blue flecks seemed to arc here and there around the sand.

"To the Olaru and Nobillo, he was known as Jericho," Rivuk said.

"Jericho?" Carak took up the picture, staring in amazement.

Lindsay lay her hand on his arm. It must be a weird feeling to find out the devil was real and to be holding a picture of him in your hands, she thought.

"It was very difficult to find information from before the Witnesses of the Immortal took control, most of it has been destroyed," Rivuk added.

"The Witnesses of the Immortal?" Lindsay asked, looking to Carak, but Carak appeared just as baffled as she.

Rivuk explained, "The Witnesses of the Immortal originated in the Korsuch capitol of Carpathia. They were a group of scientific fanatics who believed in perfection through genetic modification. At first, the Nobillo largely tolerated them because they produced quite a bit of useful medical technology. Then they began producing the first biologically engineered Children. All accounts say they were met with horror from the king and first prince. But the second prince saw their potential to help him fulfil his ambitions and used them to overthrow his father and brother. He ordered thousands to be made and declared The Witnesses of the Immortal to be the official religion of the kingdom."

Rivuk took a sip of water. "It was sometime later, the king called a council, hoping he might be able to convince the Olaru and Bonat of the benefits of using the gates to get subjects for human experimentation."

"I remember, Sirix told me about this part," Lindsay said. "The Olaru and the Bonat were against the experiments and the Korsuch and the Nobillo were for them, so they went to the Desni to get the tie-breaking vote. But before they came back, the Olaru found out they'd already been using the gates and their spies destroyed the Korsuch's gate and almost destroyed the Nobillo's."

"Those spies included Jericho," Rivuk said. "He was the one with the power to destroy the gates."

"What do you mean, the power?"

"I'll show you. This footage was taken in Carpathia." Rivuk pulled up a screen. "It's extremely old, so the quality isn't very good."

Static striped the dark image. Lindsay could make out the white columns and buildings of what looked like a city center, and one of those weird stone gates in the middle. She thought she saw movement. Then a blue light began to form.

Suddenly, it was a huge ball! She could just make out Jerry Cook in the bright light, three Olaru standing behind him. The light flew at the gate. The screen went white. She wasn't sure if it was a glitch or not. A second later, it came back on at a different angle, swaying, as though tethered only by a wire. As it swung, Lindsay could see the gate was completely destroyed, so were all the other buildings.

"Jericho," Carak breathed, as though he truly hadn't believed it until this moment.

"So wait, you're saying Jerry Cook, by himself, did that?" Lindsay asked in disbelief.

"And this," Rivuk said, handing her a picture.

"What's this?" she asked, holding up the image of a tall, smoldering building.

"The East Tower," Carak answered reverently, clawed finger running over the jagged blackened stone where it had been opened up to the elements.

"Jericho destroyed it before going after the gate. So, the Nobillo sent the Children of the Immortal after him. That was why he wasn't able to properly destroy the Nobillo gate. The Olaru were able to buy him time to escape to the forest at the cost of their own lives."

Lindsay squinted at the picture. There was something strangely familiar about it. Green lights... Like in the Temple...

A jolt of horror traveled from her chest to her stomach. Something she had long ignored reared its ugly heard. "Rivuk, why are the lights of the jail green? It's like the Temple, isn't it? That's why Lucian was able to arrive so quickly. He was already there."

"You are quite observant. Yes, they use it as a second laboratory," Rivuk answered.

"You mean torture chamber."

"That would be a charitable way of describing it."

Lindsay's stomach churned as she asked the next question. That niggling detail that hadn't made sense at the time, now possibly, horribly, did. "Did they watch the Children of the Immortal eat Kadax's legs?"

Rivuk nodded. "They were curious about the Bonat threshold for pain."

"And the same with the East Tower. It was a Korsuch laboratory, too. That's why it has green lights. He was trying to stop them!" Lindsay cried.

"Jericho was injured when the Citadel fell. From everything I've seen, I believe he was the one who brought it down."

Lindsay ran a finger along the edge of the stasis tube in the picture, eyes lingering on Jerry Cook's body. "To stop them from getting to the gate. He sacrificed himself. He was a hero."

She felt the muscles in Carak's arm clench.

Rivuk nodded again in affirmation. "And to the Witnesses of the Immortal, the greatest threat to their power if he was allowed to be seen as sympathetic. They created a mythology, blending traditional Nobillo stories and beliefs with their own stories that painted Jericho as the villain. They destroyed all of the old books that contradicted them and distributed the new ones. They trained up the Children of the Immortal to believe the Bonat to be the enemy and used Jericho as the reason."

"What is the Immortal, then?" Carak's voice was shaking.

Lindsay looked into Rivuk's eyes and knew what he was about to do. He was going to reveal the man behind the curtain.

Rivuk took out a small ancient-looking folded pamphlet titled Witnesses of the Immortal and read. "'The body may die, but through your DNA, you can become one of the Immortal.' They convinced people to donate themselves to their experiments by claiming their cell lines would be immortal."

Lindsay could feel Carak shaking.

"No." Carak said. "So it was all a lie? We killed babies, sacrificed ourselves and our children, for a lie?"

"Not all of it!" Lindsay cried. She couldn't bear to see the desolation on Carak's face. "Rivuk, you said they mixed the old beliefs with the Nobillo stories."

"Yes." Rivuk said. "The part about Jericho was a lie, and yes, they made you kill in the name of it. But the Immortal was actually the ancient Nobillo god, Shireva, they simply renamed her."

"Her?" Lindsay asked.

"Yes. That part is real. And I'm certain she has appreciated that you knew her even though she was disguised by another name. It was her symbol Lindsay bought you and her candle you kept."

Carak's shaking lessened. "Shireva is the Immortal's name?" he asked.

Lindsay breathed a sigh of relief. He understood. One God, many names, but the characteristics all the same -- just like she'd been taught.

"Yes," Rivuk said the tension in his shoulders releasing. "They are one in the same."

"So why the stasis tank? Why didn't they just kill him?" Lindsay asked.

"They realized he was able to generate a massive amount of power from his surroundings. After seventy lanc they still haven't discovered how, but they think it might be a side-effect from the Bonat-Human cross. Since then, they've been using him as a power source. They weren't exaggerating when they said you almost threw out the electrical grid by freeing him. He provides most of the power in our city. Apparently, I tried the same thing, myself, when I was younger - though more by accident and coincidence than intention. I discovered my father used Elihim to erase my memories of him, but it left a scar. That's why I keep dreaming about it."

"And why I kept seeing it, I'll bet," Lindsay said. "So what do we do now that we know?"

"We need to tell them," Carak said.

"I agree, but we have to do it at the right time, when it'll have the most impact. Too early and they won't care enough to want to do anything about it. For now, all we can do is wait."

Carak scowled.

"I don't like it any more than you do."

"Your people aren't being starved to death and forced to kill for a lie," Carak growled.

Rivuk's gaze turned hard. "They are my people. They are half Nobillo. If that is my child in Lindsay's womb, it will be a Child of the Immortal. My stake in this is very, very personal. Don't think for a moment I don't feel the ticking of the clock. But we won't get a second chance on this."

Carak stood and stalked out of the room.

Rivuk said nothing. Lindsay looked to him. Carak needed her. Rivuk nodded. Lindsay stood and followed Carak to his room.

She found him laying on the bed, curled up on his side, facing away from the door. His massive back was like a wall between them. Lindsay knelt down behind him and began stroking his smooth head, her fingers brushing his half ear. She kissed his large shoulder, pressing her body against his. She didn't know what to say to him, just love him.

"So what are we for if we weren't created by the Immortal to serve the Nobillo? What point is there to us?" Carak finally said after some minutes of silence. "Are we no more than tools? No more noble than a hammer made to crush a nail?"

Her finger played about his half-ear. "Maybe to the Korsuch. But they also saw humans as only being worth the value of their disassembled parts. You're the noblest man I've ever met." She kissed him from his shoulder up to his neck to his lips. "I don't know what purpose the Children of the Immortal have in this world, but I want us to free them so they have the chance to find it."

He rolled onto his back, looking up at the ceiling. "Everything in my life was pointless."

She straddled his body, running her hands across his chest. "You are not pointless. Your life is not pointless." She took his hand and kissed it. Tears began dotting his grey skin as she nuzzled it against her cheeks. "Carak, you're the love of my life! I don't want to live in a world without you in it! I know that's not much of a point, but it's something."

He ran his thumb across her cheeks, wiping away the tears. "I suppose that is enough." He arched up and kissed her, his arm wrapping around her body and pulling it down with him. And she cried for him, for all of them, born to be used and replaced. She cried for the hurt she felt radiating from him, the sense of betrayal and pointlessness that seemed to come from every cell of his body. For the cruelty of the manipulation they'd inflicted. He'd been so badly used and she sobbed the tears that could never fall from his engineered eyes.

She lay across his chest, the tears fully spent, body shuddering as he kissed her brow. From deep inside her, she felt the slight fluttering of life not her own. Four months? Five? It was hard to tell, but she was definitely developing a belly. She rested her hand on it.

"I hope it's yours," she murmured.

"Why?" The shock in his voice caused her to look into his absolutely gobsmacked face.

She hadn't really thought about it before she'd said it. It was just the truth. It was how she'd felt from the moment she'd suspected she might be pregnant. "Because if I have a child, I want it to be with you. I don't know how to explain it. I just really want you to be the father, but it sounds really weird to say I want you to be the father of my babies-" Her nervous verbal vomit was cut short by his kiss.

"No matter what, I will always protect and care for your child as though it were my own," he said, kissing her again.

________________________________________

Another two iuna passed as Rivuk waited for his moment. Lindsay was now heavy with child. Somehow, she still managed to train with Carak in the mornings, but her energy often flagged by midday and was all but gone by moonrise. She still came to him, not every night, but often enough he could scarcely complain.

Most times, she would have him at midday before her nap and stay with Carak at night. As she grew larger, he began to prefer this arrangement. He was hardly weak, but his strength and fighting prowess was nothing to Carak's - if his brothers were to attempt an attack on her in her weakened condition, she was far safer with his hest than with him.

The sex had changed. Her body was more sensitive. She came easily and often, typically to the point of exhaustion by the time he'd ejaculated. She always sucked his tessect first, nervous his acid might hurt the amniotic sac. Either he would join in and lick her clitoris until she screamed, or he would penetrate her after she'd finished. It might not be the all-night sex sessions that had marked the beginning of their marriage, but those would return, he was certain.

By now, he'd become reconciled to the idea of sharing her. He still didn't like it, but he could see them kiss without bristling. It allowed him time to work. Something was going on. Boz had been far too quiet. He wanted to hope that Lindsay's pregnancy had put Boz's plans to crush her on hiatus, but he knew his brother too well for that. Elihim showing up a few bil ago to "see for himself how the princess and child fared" made him nervous. It had made her nervous, too -- he'd felt her heartrate spike on seeing him at the door. She'd spent the rest of the bil very close to Carak.

Now Lindsay lay on his bed in the late-bil sunlight; her afternoon nap having lasted well into the evening. She had to be close. He turned from his desk, watching the slight undulation of her naked stomach as the baby moved.

Lucian had commented during his last visit that it seemed too small for a Child of the Immortal at this late stage. Rivuk knew what Lucian meant to imply, knew what he hoped; that Rivuk would disown the baby, allowing Lindsay to be returned to the jail, under their purview. But he wasn't going to give it to them.

He'd examined the laws thoroughly, the same Nylest used to protect the claim of her children to the noble class. He would acknowledge the child as his, regardless. So long as the claim was made and signed before the determination of paternity, it would be considered incontrovertible. The child would be a noble and entitled to all legal protections that rank entailed, regardless of who its father was.

Carak deserved that much for all he'd done for Rivuk over the years.

In his mind, Rivuk tried to picture their family in the false sunshine of fantasy. The three of them raising the two children, maybe a third on the way. Maybe his this time. Maybe that wasn't even possible. The doctors said it was rare. Rare enough they often spliced in new human material into Children of the Immortal reproductive cells rather than form new ones by combining the eggs and felous. Still, it was the picture he had to hold in his mind. Something to believe in, to work for, no matter how impossible it seemed. No matter how impossible it was.

He heard the chirp of his wristband. "Nerisa? What is it?" he asked the Bird of Paradise.

"It's Prince Boz, your grace! Feldon just told me. He's been building special boxes to counter the electro-magnetic disturbances of the forest. He's set the recording of you and Princess Lindsay to play on them. He wants to make them believe she's betrayed them. He thinks if they believe she would give up their locations, it might scare them enough to reveal their main base of operations. He's got scouts all over."

"Is Feldon among them?"

"Yes."

"Good. Thank you, Nerisa."

"Yes, your grace."

Boz was moving. With his troops, no less. He'd have to take care. There were some Children who had been angered by the cessation of hostilities with the Bonat. It was possible their loyalties had changed. Rivuk quickly began throwing on his uniform, he heard the soft stir of his wife in the bed.

"Is something the matter?" she asked with a yawn.

She looked so beautiful with her hair all a mess and sleep still hanging heavy in her eyes. He smiled. "No, I'm just going out for the evening. I won't be back until late."

"Ok. Is it important?"

"Just a meeting with some dignitary. So, you might say so."

She yawned again. "I hope it's not too boring."

He shut his eyes. Why was he lying to her? It was her life and her people in the crosshairs. He sat on the bed next to her, kissed her, and took her hand. "It won't be. I'm going to see the Bona Serat Corsar."

She jolted awake. "Sirix?! Why? You've got to take me with you!"

That was why. She'd want to go. "It's far too dangerous, if you were hurt-"

"They're my people, why would it be dangerous?" she interrupted.

He took her in his arms and told her all. After he had, she opened his waistband, coaxing his tessect out of its pouch with her tongue. He moaned as it entered the hot, moist cavern of her mouth, snaking down into her throat as the contractions of her swallowing closed all around it, sending jolts of pleasure through him. Her tongue ran up and down the thin spine of a shaft. He closed his eyes, savoring the sensations. She'd gotten far too good at this.

"Uhn..." he groaned as the acid burst from him, down her throat. He gazed down at her, her red lips pressed against his stomach.

An overwhelming feeling of love came over him. He ran his fingers through her dark hair, feeling the locks slip between them. They ran down to her shoulders as she pulled back. He pushed gently back and forth. Every strike against her teeth was like a blinding flash of pleasure, and in between her tongue! It stroked the back of his telson with quick, firm flicks. His claws extended. He felt the pressure building, it was almost painful, he had to release it!

His mind went white as ecstasy exploded through him in one giant burst. He let out a long moan. He shut his eyes and let the feeling dissipate slowly with her gentle swallows. His claws retracted. He cupped her cheeks in both hands as he marveled at her beauty. The forest and Sirix and Boz were a million miles away at the moment. And she was here. And lovely.

Her brown eyes flashed with determination, but behind that flash he could see her fear. "This way, when you came back, no matter how late it is, you can take me in your arms and do whatever you'd like. And you'd better. Even if it's the middle of the night."

He smiled. "As you wish."

"And, if you could, give Sirix and Donil my love. I wish I had something I could send with you for them."

"From everything you've told me of them, your words will be enough." He kissed her and then pressed his brow to hers. Standing and fixing his uniform, he walked to the window. "I will be back by morning, my wilding."

"I'll keep your bed warm for you."

He spun to face her, her splayed out body enticing on his bed. How he'd love to come home to it! But this was urgent. She needed to understand her safety was no more guaranteed than his. "No. Please, stay with Carak tonight. No matter what happens to me, he will protect you. It'll ease my mind to know you're with him."

"Ok," Lindsay said. "I'll stay with him. But you still come to me."

"I will." He stepped onto the window ledge. "You have my word."

"I love you, Rivuk."

"I love you, too, Lindsay." He fell backwards out the window. Turning over, he flew off into the darkening sky, keeping in his mind that final glance of his wife.

He flew quickly towards Sirix's camp, sparing only the most casual glances around him. The darkness made it hard to see a scout, but it would also make him harder to see. He heard the whistle of the spear just before it found his chest, throwing it off with a thought.