The Spiral Begins #2
Seer’s laugh cracked the silence wide open as he turned his upper body at him. “Well, I was kind of hoping to learn that from you.”
Bacon jammed his hands back in his pockets, head shaking with all the bones in his body.
“Come on, little brother,” Seer murmured, easing back onto the bench with a deep sigh. “Confess it.”
The words left his mouth as a whisper but hit Bacon’s mind like hurricane force winds.
Fuck me.
He clenched his fists in his coat and looked around, sucking air into his tight, burning lungs as a barrage of shit hit his tongue.
“Been a while,” Seer said easily when all Bacon managed was a screaming silence. “We got time.”
Time. Yeah. Fuck.
Bacon shot off the bench and paced a few feet.
“I can’t sit for this,” he said, catching Seer’s calm nod as he filled the air with plumes of breath full of all the silent conversations he carried with himself.
Stupid conversations. Childish shit. “You know what? Fuck it,” Bacon said, facing Seer with his arms open.
“I gotta tell you, I am so sick of… shining pots and pans and solving daily recipe crises and—and raping my mind for food storage solutions.” He shoved his fists back in his pocket, dropping his head. “And I know how this sounds.”
“Theo,” Seer called, voice silk and steel. “Look at me son.”
Bacon pried his eyes off the ground and surrendered to his blue gaze.
“You need more. And that’s okay. At the very least you need a change of scenery every now and then. We all need that.”
Bacon held his stare as guilt gnawed at his guts while hope bubbled up inside him. “Look… I know feeding people is… important. I’ll always be a cook, that’ll never change. I love feeding people. What?! I do,” Bacon swore when Seer grinned then chuckled.
“You don’t need to convince me of that. You think I always want to see things? To know things?”
Bacon stilled, surprised at what he was implying. “Well, that’s a pretty damn… kickass gift,” he said, his conviction fizzling out at the look in Seer’s clear gaze. “Fuck,” Bacon barely said, making his way back to the bench and sitting, holding his stare the whole way.
“Shocked?” Seer muttered lightly, humor hinting in the single word.
Bacon realized his mouth still hung open. “So shocked,” he confessed quietly. “I’m trying… to get it. How you could get tired of…”
“Because everything I learn and see comes with a burden. I see things that need fixing, and I can’t because sometimes I don’t know how, or it’s not my job to fix. I see things I can’t unsee, I know things I can’t unknow. Things I never wanted, never asked to see and know. And people…”
Seer drew a heavy breath that pulled at Bacon’s lungs.
“Well, you know,” he said with a tired resolve. “Nobody wants to be near the one who sees shit that’s nobody’s business but God’s.”
It suddenly hit Bacon in his spine. What he was saying.
He raced over the years he’d known the man, looking for evidence of what he was realizing. And there it fucking was, in every recollection. The man who was treated like the dirty secret reaper, not a brother. Not even a friend.
Fuck.
Seer clapped a hand on his shoulder, shaking it lightly. “Don’t mourn over a darkness that no longer haunts me, son.”
His words added to the weight in his chest and gut. “I didn’t realize, brother,” Bacon said, a rasp scraping the words.
Seer’s hand moved to his neck. “I know,” he said, his words warm silk, fingers a steel cold assurance. “You’re a good man. And a good cook,” he added lightly, patting his neck.
****
Bishop wanted to run.
His blood was too hot.
His brain sizzled in the wrong kind of fire.
And his heart was fucking coming apart.
Bishop eyed the figure waiting for him at the edge of the woods.
He did this. He was the maker of the monster in his skin.
The demon chewing at his sanity. Now he had to touch the abomination.
Learn everything he didn’t want to know without killing him.
Not until he knew every dirty detail. Then he’d have that civil chat. With his fucking DNA.
Sinrik turned and Bishop wondered if the connection he’d cemented in his blood went both ways.
If he hadn’t brought her home, he’d have gone and gotten her.
Every step toward the man turned the battle in his mind bloodier.
Soon, bloodlust threw down with duty and illogical obsession threw down with fatherhood.
The hellish bat-tie promised something or somebody would break beyond repair. And he couldn’t let it be him.
He stopped five feet from Sinrik, their gazes locked under the swamp’s half-moon.
Bishop breathed through the power in his veins as his blood's nano-teeth prepared to latch and learn. Latch and lynch. His incisors throbbed too. Neither were bothered with the risks he was about to take. But Bishop sure the fuck was. He wasn’t sure how his upgrades would manifest. How powerful were they and how wild would they be?
Who would they serve? The Bishop or The Bat. The dark or the light?
Sinrik stood unmoving with his hands in his coat pockets.
Either he didn’t sense what sort of death sentence stood before him or wasn’t bothered about it.
“What’s the plan, Marsh Leader,” he muttered with a tilt of his head.
“You killing me or keeping me.” His gaze shifted past Bishop. “We got company.”
Bishop turned to see one of the Sisters walking briskly toward them.
“Is that a nun?” Sinrik wondered, perplexed.
“Good evening, Gentlemen,” she chirped. “My name is Beatrice and I’m here to assist.”
Assist. “With what?” Bishop demanded, his patience chewing on his ass.
“I am to referee,” she said with a curt nod of her head.
“Says who?” Bishop ordered, ready to rectify.
Better not fucking say God.
“Our Belle Eveque,” she answered with a perfect nod.
Worse than God. Fucking Dieu.
“You are not to hurt our guest,” she kindly informed, acting all angelic.
Sure. Nobody was perfect. Especially tonight.
Sinrik locked gazes with him again.
“Nobody is hurting anybody tonight.” He told the lie perfectly to her face and it was a fucking balm in his burning soul. “Just wanted to shake his hand,” he added. “For bringing my wife back to me.”
“Perfect!” the tiny nun approved, clasping her hands together in prayer formation.
The seconds ticked and Bishop saw the revelation happen in Sinrik’s digging stare. This fight was not being postponed. Just moved indoors.
A quiet curiosity edged into his dark gaze and Bishop saw him wondering what he had up his sleeve. Sinrik bravely stretched out his hand.
Bishop slammed his palm into his, the Quantum Architecture power finding the continuous feedback loop that permitted movement. Then he inverted it.
Bishop watched the shock detonate in his gaze as his biological constructs turned against him, locking him in an invisible prison.
“As I said… thank you for bringing my wife back to me.” Bishop’s energy raced through him and immediately hit calcium lattice reinforcement running through bone along with load bearing modifications at every joint. Intentional design.
He went into his vascular next and found it too tidy. Natural blood fluctuated, this didn’t. And the composition — Bishop had felt it through Beth. Through his son. Whatever it was, it carried something his baby hadn’t rejected. And yet, it was nothing he recognized or could name.
Apprehension followed him into the neural layers next. He encountered more what the fucks in a fractured blueprint. Clean-edged absences sat where episodic memory gathered for indexed experience.
He searched for damage next—atrophy, anything natural.
Again, nothing. It had been cleared. And whoever did it knew the architecture well enough to remove without destroying. They took the index and left the library. Sinrik wouldn't know what was gone because nothing in him would remember having it.
Bishop continued, tiptoeing through the scattered fragments of what was beginning to feel like a crime scene.
He spotted emotional imprints. He handled the sensory data, finding more of the same. Sourceless. No who, what, when, where or why. And yet the amygdala was still active, still firing at intervals, like a signal that nobody was receiving.
Or were they?
He looked at the sensory fragments closer.
Cold stone.
Something burning that wasn't wood.
A sound — not quite a voice, maybe a frequency.
An impression without origin.
His pulse slowed at the next discovery. Loyalty. Fierce and furious. Also sourceless.
Next he found a devotion.
Bishop slowly moved over it, looking for a fucking name or source.
His blood stirred as acid pooled in his stomach. Whatever he loved before… he still loved. But he couldn’t find it.
Beatrice cleared her throat loudly, announcing their handshake had entered overtime.
Hold your holy horses, sister. One more layer.
He located Sinrik’s adrenal axis and hit the mother of holy shits.
What the hell am I seeing?
It didn’t seem human, but it wasn’t corrupted. Parasitic? The cells were oriented toward something the way a compass is to north. And tuned to a frequency Bishop had no instrument for.
He quickly mapped everything and executed a script to locate the missing data.
Sinrik burst free of his prison and locked iron fingers to Bishop’s throat.
“Oh my God!” Beatrice shrieked.
Bishop slammed his hand on Sinrik’s neck, latching tight.
“Oh no! Stop that!” Beatrice ordered. “Release each other!”
A nameless power moved through Sinrik. Intelligent. Pissed.
Bishop flipped to defensive architecture, building a firewall of insulation around his own neural pathways.
“In the name of… of the Lord!” Beatrice yelled, grabbing their arms and yanking.
Two seconds and Sinrik identified gap junctions between Bishop’s cells and walked right through his defense.