Anima's Conquest: Book One
Chapter 9: The Trade-off
David jumped when he heard a knock at the door. He looked out the second story window to see the top of Brian’s head, and rushed down the stairs to let him inside.
“David… Your eyes,” Brian said. He tilted his head and his upper lip twitched as he stared at the malachite green streaks in David’s dark amber eyes. He sneered and shook his head. “What the hell’ve ya done to yourself?”
David panted and shook his tensed-up hands at his sides. “I’ve done nothing. It’s the girl, it’s all her. Her very presence is poison and I am right in its grip!” He laughed nervously.
Brian seized the other man by his shoulders. “You’re miles away from Meredith, and no one else’s eyes look like this. I’m gonna ask again, what’ve you done to yourself?” He watched David’s face contort with fear and followed his darting gaze. He took a deep breath through narrowly parted lips. “What have you done to her? Some part of her, is it still here?”
“I’ll tell you, but you can’t tell Richard.” David choked.
“That all depends on how bad it is. Just bein’ honest with ya.”
“For some time now, I have been synthesizing a drug from the fluids taken during Meredith’s regular lab work. I called it Proteus… I have been dosing myself.”
Brian folded his arms. “So you have done this to yourself. But, what does it do? Besides, you know,” he said, motioning towards David’s face.
“Spontaneous merging with Zelishem consciousness,” David said.
Brian rolled his eyes. “Which you already knew was unsafe! That’s why all the preparations, all the rituals – because we can’t just introduce our brains to theirs cold!”
David shook his head. “No. No, no, no, no. I designed it to be a safe means of spontaneously discovering their world, their minds! And it is! I’m not dead, and neither is anyone else who’s taken it!”
“You’ve given it to other people? Nevermind ‘at for now, have you entertained the possibility that you could’ve failed?”
“This is a harmless side effect!” David exclaimed. “I didn’t call you over here to show you my eyes!”
“Right. Well, if it works, how come you don’t want Richard to know about this? It could expedite his plans, why wouldn’t he want to know?”
“You asked if I’d entertained the possibility that I failed. Well, I have, in a sense. The Proteus is safe. The Zelishem are not. That is what I have discovered. We need to change our course. We need to prepare to go to war with them, as they plan to with us. But Richard will never give up his dream of using them to create a new race.” He paused. “I need your help. Meredith will come after us all, and she wants me first.”
“I don’t follow, David.”
“Of course you don’t! You haven’t seen what I have.”
“No, but I spend enough time with Alina, who has seen much more than you, to know that the Zelishem are not out to go to war with humanity. To know that peaceful relationships between our races are possible. If the Zelishem have a quarrel with you, I imagine you’ve only got yourself to blame. …I’m gonna tell Richard about this drug. I’m sure he’ll be thrilled.”
David tensed up and took a breath as if preparing to speak, but he remained silent and sat down. He collected himself. “Listen… Brian. One of two things will happen if you tell Richard about Proteus. He will either excommunicate me entirely, or he will seize complete control… He will no longer consult with me or seek my advice. I will just become his one-man pharmaceutical company. I don’t want any of that.”
Brian tilted his head. “David, have you ever considered that what you do or don’t want doesn’t really matter when the fate of the world is in the balance?”
David’s face turned indignant, but, before he had a chance to answer, he heard a strained scream from upstairs. “Brenda…”
Brian immediately ran up the stairs, and David followed closely behind, though with less urgency in his step. When the two of them reached her room, they found her sitting up in her bed, speaking in the language of the Zelishem in a hasty and gravelly tone as she bled from the ears.
David knelt in front of her and looked her in the eyes. She appeared unable to see him. “Brenda!” He shouted. When she did not respond, he grabbed her shoulders and shook her.
“David, stop!” Brian called to him and yanked him off of Brenda, who slumped onto the bed. She continued to rasp in tongues. “David. Didn’t you say your drug could safely integrate Zelishem and human consciousness? Jesus, I don’t know why you didn’t give it to her sooner, the way she’s been doing, but… If you’ve got any on ya, d’you think it’d help her right now? It looks like she’s physically at war with what she’s absorbed from Meredith,” he whispered in a nervous haste.
David looked down. “I do. I do have some... She’d need a direct dose, though. I need to prepare a solution. I keep a set of syringes in a kit in Meredith’s old dresser.”
“All right, then, let’s hurry!” Brian exclaimed. He fetched some water and a syringe from Meredith’s room. “Here. Hurry!”
David poured the water into a small vial of Proteus he’d kept in his pocket, and he shook it until the green crystals dissolved. He loaded up the syringe, and crawled onto the bed. He moved Brenda’s hair, and injected the solution into the base of her cranium.
Brenda drew a sharp breath and sat up.
“Brenda! Are you all right? What happened?” Brian asked, rushing to sit beside her.
Brenda still did not respond, though she appeared cognizant of the two men in the room. Her eyes narrowed and, for the first time in years, she smiled from ear to ear. David’s eyes widened and his mouth fell open slightly as he noticed Brenda’s irises turn completely green.
“We made a mistake,” she said, enunciating more clearly than she ever had before. “We have all made a terrible mistake.” She let out a burst of laughter, then her face paled and her body went limp.
“Brenda?!” David screamed and shook her limp form.
Brian took her pulse. “Nothing. You overdosed her, David.” He crossed his arms and knelt over the dead woman as David backed away. “This coulda been prevented, David, but your secrets were more important,” he snarled.
“But what would have been the point? We all accepted from the beginning that lives would be lost…”
“We’re talking about the wife of the man behind this entire operation. If you don’t think this’ll be a setback… You’re delusional.”
The creaking of the front door cut their conversation short. “Richard’s home. He’s probably got Dr. Morgenstern with ‘im. You stay up here.”
David nodded and sat beside Brenda’s corpse, using her grungy bedsheets to clean the blood from her ears. Brian met Richard and Tabitha at the bottom of the stairs.
“Brian? What are you doing here?” Richard asked. The other man’s face paled and he sucked in his bottom lip. Tabitha appeared not to notice this – her face lit up and she took a step forward. Richard narrowed his eyes. “…Something’s wrong, isn’t it?”
Brian nodded slowly. “It’s Brenda. She was in distress… She’s dead, Richard. I’m so sorry. David was here, he tried to save ‘er with some drug he made, but it was too late.” Tabitha blinked and took a step back. Her hands curled into fists and she rubbed her thumbs against them.
Richard sneered and his brows knitted together. “Where is David?”
“Upstairs. In ‘er room.”
Richard nodded and tore up the stairs. Tabitha’s eyes darted across the room.
“Terrible timing, isn’t it, Dr. Morgenstern? Sorry ‘bout this. It was a long time coming, I just didn’t think I’d be there to see it.”
“It isn’t your fault. But, the woman in Lancaster County… Alina. She said you were somebody I should talk to if I want to understand Richard’s plans, that you’ve spent extensive time translating ancient texts,” Tabitha said, not quite looking Brian in the eye. “I saw Meredith. I can’t deny she’s something other than human after seeing her. But, I want to know what the race she belongs to has to do with the population I work with. What you guys want with someone like me, why I have to be involved. Alina said that’d be in those books you translated.”
Brian smiled wryly. “Guess she thinks I’m good for something, then. I have translations of their prophetic texts. I can lend them to you, and I’ll be available if you have any questions about ‘em.
The two of them both looked up when they heard Richard calling for David in a frantic roar. Brian put his hand on Tabitha’s shoulder, which had visibly tensed when she heard Richard’s voice. “Go into the study,” he whispered as he pointed in the direction of a small room. “Have a seat. I’m going up.” Tabitha nodded as she slunk away to the other room. She sat down in an armchair with her knees pulled to her chest and let out a heavy and ragged sigh.
Upstairs, Richard confronted Brian. “You said David was in this room. Where could he have gone?”
“I don’t know. We’re too high up for him to have gone out the window.”
Richard shook his head and knelt over Brenda. “He’s been trouble for the past two months. Some wretched combination of dodgy and demanding. I’m going to call an ambulance for Brenda, and I’ll be going with them to help throw off any suspicions they may have. You stay here with Dr. Morgenstern, make sure she doesn’t go running back off up North.”
“All right,” Brian agreed. He stared at his feet and pressed a hand to his chest. “Are you gonna be okay, Richard? I mean…”
Richard stood up and squared his shoulders. “I knew she was dying – David told me her health was failing. It disturbed me at first and I ran through every way it could have been prevented in my mind. Short of never beginning this endeavor in the first place, there was nothing that could have been done. It was her or the new world, and I chose the new world. Truth be told, she had served her purpose.”
Brian dropped both of his hands at his sides, feeling an icy sensation spread through his insides as he looked at Richard, trying to hide the fear and intimidation he felt as a result of the other man’s words and demeanor. Richard pulled his phone from his pocket and placed an emergency call. When the paramedics arrived to take Brenda away, he went with them as he said he would.