Chapter 10
Maryalyan wakes to emptiness so vast that for a long time she wanders aimlessly in the vastness. That ever-present presence that has always been with her, that is a part of her as much as she is a part of him is gone…completely and totally gone.
Gone…gone…. gone…gone…
It echoes hollowly in her mind and worst yet, where once she never felt pain, her essence is now wracked with it; every bone, every nerve, every fibre of her host body throbs with the pain; a pain that refuses to go away, a pain that drives itself deep into her essence.
Even worst than the pain is the fact that she no longer feels or can access her essence’s energy. This is impossible for even when she first came into existence she felt that energy. It cannot just disappear for her essence is her; her in every manner, shape and form. Yet everything is gone….Maryalyan’s mind refuses to understand this for humans have yet to come up with a technology that can do this to her, but yet, here she lies as weak and helpless as a human babe.
Finally, she comes to realize that she is moving…no not her but something she is on is moving and that movement is down; her eyes flutter and pain shoots from the back of her skull to her toes.
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The next time when Maryalyan wakes, it is a much slower process. The pain has increased substantially and on her first attempt to move, she discovers that movement is impossible. Only then does she realize that she is lying naked on a steel table with both her wrists and ankles securely fastened.
She hears a voice that she does not recognize and a more menacing voice she cannot ever remember hearing. She looks around for the owner of the voice but with her limited movement it is all for naught.
In desperation, she reaches deep inside herself for the core of her essence. A sigh of relief escapes her when she finally finds it and then dismay when she discovers it encased in a bubble so hard that even she is unable to penetrate it. There is only one that can trap her core like that and unable to comprehend why he would do such a thing she lies in shock…Then much like an echo two thousand plus earth years in building, she cries out.
“Why have you abandoned me? Why have you forsaken me?”
And much like the reply, she gave those two thousand earth years ago his reply echoes in her mind.
“I have not abandoned you. I did what was necessary to get you where you needed to be and you are there, though I fear your trials are only beginning. Have faith in me, have faith in us for even when you do not feel me, even when times are darkest, when all seems lost, I will be with you. Your pain will be my pain and together as always we will get through this.”
The voice of her one and only fades away, leaving the voice of evil as her only companion.
“Just make sure you keep her alive. I will be calling the high court together and I want her well enough to talk at that time.”
“Don’t worry she will alive long enough for you to use her for your needs and rest assured that I will discover and trap her power for us. I’ll inform you of anything I discover.”
“Do that.”
Silence…. Maryalyan strains to hear what, if anything else may be happening but the pain of the body that she now feels seems to block everything but the loudest of noise and there is now little of that.
“Hurt’s doesn’t it!” The voice of evil inquires.
Maryalyan opens her eyes and what she sees does not give her any encouragement. The human male is pale like a ghost and the smile he sports is so evil that it makes the human host shiver. Without even thinking about it Maryalyan attempts to feel his spirit but the racking pain, the abandonment of “the other” and her trapped core makes it impossible.
The man lowers his hand to her nude securely strapped human body. His finger barely touches her skin and much to her shame even that little touch makes her back arch and she releases a scream of pain; the human chuckles.
“I heard you were hell on wheels. You don’t seem so hellish right now…”
His finger travels from her neck to her navel and his laughter plays counterpart to her screams.
“He said I had to keep you alive and believe me I will but long before I finish what I have planned for you, you will beg for your death. Now who and what are you?”
Maryalyan barely opens her mouth to reply when the human digs his nails into her bare skin causing a pain so intense that it blinds her to anything else. He continues administrating the pain until she passes out.
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Due to his nature, Zimmerman is unable to comprehend that it is impossible for Maryalyan’s to lie and as such, he refuses to believe any of the answers that she willingly and readily provides his questions. Therefore, every time she answers his questions, he inflicts pain and every time he does, she passes out only to be awakened again and asked the same or similar question again.
For the first time ever, time comes to mean something for Maryalyan and she learns to hate it. She learns to hate the minutes and the seconds of her torture, the hours of questioning followed by more minutes and seconds of torture. Eventually she learns about days.
How many earth days she is not sure but the same routine has played out at least ten times. She comes to consciousness strapped to a steel table; hours of questions and pain follow. There is the laser and the hand that holds the laser; oh how she comes to loath that hand. She is fully awake and aware as the man performs his tasks. The laser cuts into her; he probes her insides, laughs at her screams, continues with the questions, questions and more questions, and never satisfied with the answers. He probes her every orifice, he cuts her and sews her back up, more hours of question, followed by minutes and seconds of pain. Finally, the straps are removed and she is dragged to her dark cell. Just when she is sinking into blessed darkness they come, and for the rest of the evening other humans keep her awake using a variety of methods that only have one thing in common; the abuse of her body.
Days…oh how she comes to loathe days. Everyday the cuts become deeper and longer. Everyday her organs are moved, probed, and sampled and those deemed unnecessary by the madman are removed.
How long she suffers under his knife and laser, how long she suffers under his questioning, how long she suffers under the pain he induces she does not really know but by the reckoning it had to have been days. One day passes into the next and the next. Minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day…. until.
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Maryalyan cannot remember the last time she came back to consciousness without the face or the voice of the madman ringing in her ears or the feel of others probing and prodding her. The pain has become her companion, why is he not cutting into her, why is he not asking her questions and not believing her answers, why…..
Eventually she comes to realize that she is not strapped to a table and that she has the freedom to move. On her first attempt, she ends back on the floor screaming in pain as if that evil monster is once again cutting into her flesh. The bombardment of the electronics is ceaseless and the weaken state of the body has no ability to resist what the bombardment is inflicting.
The next time Maryalyan comes to consciousness she once again finds herself alone and not strapped to the steel table. A brief memory of the last time she awakened unrestrained and her attempt to move flashes across her mind. Determined to keep from repeating her last consciousness she takes much better care in moving.
The process of sitting up is long and arduous for the weaken body but it finally succeeds at its task. Finally, the body sits upright and she rests against the wall until she is drawing sufficient breath to satisfy the pain-racked body. Only then does she take stock of her surroundings.
Maryalyan finds that she is in a dark box like container; something the humans call a cell; the memory of the name comes slowly. The only light comes from a feeble source outside the door and this filters in from bars high on what looks like a steel door. The cell she determines is no more than three paces across and three paces wide.
She turns
to examining her host body. It looks emaciated compared to the last time she examined it and the skin is crisscrossed with scars; both old and new. Touching a few of these scars, she discovers that the skin around many is being held together with steel staples and that some of these staples are festering. Her inner sense confirms her suspicion that the human body will fall victim to the festering soon.
Her mind flashes back to the recent past, the pain, the knife, the leering face as the human cut into her and took pieces of her flesh. The human body; so frail that it screamed in agony, yet so strong that it refused to give into his evil.
The human body was one of their greatest achievements to date. Even if everything else they try to achieve fails the one success that she and “the other’ will always have is the human body; the perfect container for the spirit. Only if they could make the same leaps and bounds in the spirit as they did the human body but unlike the body moulding the spirit is impossible.
“Maryalyan.”
Maryalyan jumps in surprise and then immediately regrets it as her abused body screams out at the torment the move caused.
“Maryalyan. It is I, the center of your spirit.”
“Oh how I have missed you so. I am sorry.”
“Sorry? What are you sorry for Maryalyan? I should be the one apologizing for having to leave you at the mercy of that human.”
“I am sorry for not understanding what my leaving you those two thousands earth years ago did to you. I could not fathom the pain you described or the loneliness.”
“Ah…well then this adventure of yours will enrich the both of us and make us that much closer, though I believe that you got the worst of the deal.”
“Yes it will center of my spirit. So why have you come to me now when you refused all the other times I called for you?”
“Because now the danger of that human ripping your essence from you has passed. For many earth days, he probed and took parts from you but never once did I allow him access to your essence.”
The voice pauses for some time before continuing. “At first, I encased it because I knew it would get you to the bright ones. I really did not believe the mad one could take your essence as he claims to his superiors but then I saw him rip the spirit out of another and started having my doubts. So I stayed and kept you safe from him. Now his time has run out and he needs you well enough to speak before the assembly.”
“And the bright ones? What about them?”
“They are there with you. I knew if they managed to get you, they would take you to the same place as the bright ones. That human male…The Judge…. would have died before giving you the information you wanted and what you would have pried from his spirit after his death would have left you no better off than you were before you went to him. I saw this clearly; hence my actions to trap your essence. Those spirits are all around you Maryalyan. They are waiting for you. Can’t you feel them?”
“How can I feel them when you have blocked me from my essence?!” An angry Maryalyan screams.
“Oh!” An embarrassed reply.
If the sadist Dr. Zimmerman had been around and watching at that moment, his disgust at his failures over the last two weeks would have immediately disappeared, and order or no he would have been stripping Maryalyan to the bone. For at the very moment that “the other” releases her essence and rejoins her as they have been joined since the beginning of time there was a flash of light so bright that it chases every shadow from the cell, a pulse so strong that it would explain why every monitoring system around the world has suddenly begun to ring. Once rejoined the two immediately go to work on repairing the human body. They expel the infection, heal the scars, mend the still open skin, eject the staples, and replace missing organs.
The foreign object that The Judge implanted into the body they keep in place because now that Maryalyan is once again in possession of her essence the object actually helps her, for she no longer has to spend energy to keep the electronics from burning her body as the object performs that task for her.
“Center of my spirit, all you need to do now is provide nourishment and the body will be fine.”
Maryalyan ignores “the others” concerns for the human body and reaches out. Sure enough she feels the bright ones; thousands of them. All have been severely damaged by the mad doctor and much too many are beyond repair but with care, maybe just as many viable bright ones can be saved.
“Are there enough to start over?” Maryalyan questions.
“Barely but yes. The process will take longer than it would have otherwise but yes there is still enough.”
“How much time do I have?”
“In earth days…..a week.”
“Will that be enough?”
“It will have to be. Spend the next couple earth days recovering your strength and then you can commence mending and mark any bright ones able to be mended.”
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The Judge had never been shaken to the core as he was only an hour ago. When the alarms had begun ringing, he had thought them a local phenomenon but then Thompson called to tell him that alarms are ringing all around the world.
The Judge does not believe in coincidences or Thompson’s feeble attempt to convince him that a “person of interest” has just made themselves known in each of earth’s monitoring location; no that would mean there were thousands out there and The Judge refuses to believe that.
A quick call to Dr. Zimmerman and a check on the woman proves fruitless as the woman was still unconscious and in poor form. There is only one thing, or so The Judge was told long ago, that can cause alarms to ring all over the world and that thing is something The Judge fears. The fear has nothing to do with the possibility of his death, it stems from failure to bring his grandest ambition to life; failure to bring the world together under one rule…. his rule.
As far as The Judge is concerned, the alarms signal the coming of the end for only a magnetic force of gigantic magnitude can cause every monitoring station to go off at once and if that force strikes earth, their time is short. He remember the pulse that they had discovered long ago and how his astronomers had stated that it was coming straight for earth and if it kept up that pace and direction it would drive itself right through earth’s core…but then they lost track of it. How they could ever lose track of something like that The Judge still does not understand.
He, like every other world leader have been watching the night skies closely and what they have been seeing over the last year and more recently is discouraging, but The Judge never believed that it was the signal of the end and still doesn’t but… Something is happening out there, we all know it.
Remembering the strange pulse, The Judge contacts the astrologer that initially informed him of it but much to The Judge’s disappointment, he is informed that “no they have not picked up on the pulse again”.
Maybe there is still time. I can come up with some lame excuse and push the date of the tribune up. One way or another all will be mine…. maybe those dam alarms will come into use after all.
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Maryalyan got lucky, or at least the guard that was sent to check on her did. Lucky because if the man had not just finished satisfying himself with another of the “guest”, not even Maryalyan’s naked, emaciated or not body would have kept him from entering and discovering the truth. As it was, the guard elected to take a quick peek through the bars. What he saw was a body curled into a small ball and laying unconscious on the concrete floor. Deciding there was no threat and that the woman had not yet awakened, he reported such to Dr. Zimmerman, who reported such to The Judge. If anyone would have bothered to open the door and look closely, they would have discovered the truth and of course discovered that Maryalyan was no longer so useless. In which case, no more “guests” would have needed to worry about unwanted attention.
For the first couple of days the only time she comes “alive” is when they push nourishment into her cell. Only then does she wake from her self-indu
ced trance for as “the other” had stated the human body was in dire need of substance. Therefore, for the first two days Maryalyan gobbles down the food as quickly as she can and then returns to her self-induced condition. It is the next few days after, which things get very busy.
That task turns out to be more difficult that she first believed it would be for the electronics invades every square inch of this underground complex. As such, she has to be careful with the amount of energy that she releases when she creates a vision of herself lying on the floor. Careful even as she unbars her cell and then like a ghost travels the caverns.
Everything seems to be conspiring against her; everything seems to be slowing her down. It is not enough for her to mark each of the bright ones. First, she has to examine their spirits to determine if the madman has damaged them beyond repair. Those still salvageable she salvages and that takes time. Some she is able to do on her own, but far too many require the help of the other. Those they cannot save she lovingly and quietly lays to rest making the issue of a sudden increase in death rates a major concern to those in charge, which in turn makes them even more vigilant in watching. Every spirit she repairs increases her hopes of success in the upcoming migration but as “the other” had stated there are far fewer than they would have liked.
She is halfway through her allotted week when it hits her. The animals, they will require animals and food for the humans as the place where they are going is newly born. This had been discussed and the decision had already been made that substance would be transferred from this world to that. She decides to make the animals and food plants the “the other’s” responsibility and as Maryalyan had not totally forgiven him for what he put her through it gives her great satisfaction to think of him surrounded with those he best mirrors.
The process is slow and sometimes frustrating work for Maryalyan but necessary if they are to continue. More than once the sorrow at what the Doctor had done to the bright ones makes her contemplate giving it all up but every time she considers this option she remembers the joy she experiences whenever a bright one is born and it is this that makes her continue the seemingly endless task.