19 Malice

'I don't know if I'm waiting for you,

Because you told me not to.

I had left behind pieces of me stained by your blood.

I thought I had saved you,

But, I was the one who needed to be saved.

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The ignorance, pride,

My emotions had committed another unprecedented error,

A burden, that I had forced upon you.

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I know you are out there,

Somewhere, I cannot reach,

A tear of a soul,

Lost among thousands.

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The end is not the destruction,

The end is a new beginning.'

- LOVE:less act 6 -.

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The lingering moonlight shining above the Grey City was obliterated by the rapidly falling darkness. The canopy of luminous stars materialized amongst an ocean of blackness. Hidden behind slowly roaming clouds of industrial smoke that looked almost transparent, shimmering orbs that tried to illuminate the darkness.

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"What next?" Nion asked, glaring.

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The faint wind brushed against the surface of the water puddles, the ripples ruffling the stillness of the surface and shattering the reflection of the alley.

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"It's time!" Samuel said as he checked his wristwatch and stopped the alarm from ringing. Nion patiently waited for the answer to her question.

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"Sorry... Erm, I got to go. I'd love to stay longer, but as they say - duty calls!" Samuel began to pack up his stuff. "It was very nice to meet you, young lady," he shook Nion's hand hastily.

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'Don't...' The silent voice had hissed inside Nion's head. She opened her mouth, but no words would come out.

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"Take care of yourself!" The old grey-headed man waved goodbye and headed inside the old subway station.

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'Don't let him go,' the silent voice hissed once again, but this time it was much clearer. After a moment of hesitation, Nion finally spoke up. "Wait!" she shouted. Instead of simply calling Samuel's attention, her intonation had sounded rather like an order. Samuel stopped in his path, freezing in his tracks for a second.

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"Jesus! What's wrong with you?! Samuel screamed. "Don't scare me like that!!" He whipped his forehead.

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"Tonight... Tonight, I am leaving the city..." Nion relented.

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"Oh! That's important! Important enough to give me a goddamn heart attack!" Samuel huffed while massaging his chest.

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"I'm sorry, I did not mean to scare you..." she apologized.

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"You'd better be..." He sighed. "So, you are leaving huh? That's very unusual, for people to leave this damn city..."

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"You still haven't told me about the Sixth Judgement..." Nion was interrupted.

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"Look, I'd love to spend your last moments together before you leave, okay. But I have to go." Samuel emphasized.

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"Please! I don't know how to explain it, but it feels like something inside me is telling me that I need to hear your story… To understand..." Nion stammered as she tried her best to explain her thoughts.

Samuel had lifted his suitcase from the ground. He looked at Nion and frowned. "To understand what?"

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"It may sound strange, but have you ever felt some sort of a connection with someone you've never met before... As if we..." She was interrupted again.

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"As if we knew each other," he concluded. "Interesting... So perhaps I was right about you after all," he put his suitcase on the ground and went back to Nion.

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"Sumus omnes ad infernum..." Samuel muttered, then lit up another cigarette and pointed it towards Nion's face while walking in circles as if he were lecturing her. "Did you know that a Replicant is just an empty shell? An emotionless machine without any personal will, desire, passion, no attachments to anything; it looks human but is empty inside..." he recounted.

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"When I was 49," Samuel said, as his chest pushed out smoke in rapid, deliberate bursts, "my friend Marcus and I got caught in a car accident. There was a bright glare followed by a loud bang that put me asleep for a while. When I regained my senses, I heard my friend cursing at the front door of the driver's seat because it would not open. It took me a moment to notice that we were locked in a sinking car with water rapidly pouring from both sides. I tried to calm Marcus down but when I tried to talk, I immediately struggled to breathe. With eyes full of tears, I could only observe things happening around me… I was in the passenger seat after all..."

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"The situation went from dire to desperate when Marcus started losing it too. I remember him screaming, "Not like that, I don't want to end up like that." So, I gathered the rest of the energy I had left and tried to open the front door on my side but it felt like there was a solid wall on the other side, making it impossible to budge the front door even a centimeter... All our efforts to open the doors ended up in vain. Then there was silence. I looked at Marcus until our eyes met, then we stared at each other while tears kept streaming at the same speed as the water pouring inside the car. It was getting cold, but neither of us could say a single word; there was no time to persuade or argue because the words were not enough to describe how fucked we were..." he lamented.

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"Just imagine, forty-nine years of living in this world. Despite the continuous failures, successes, and never-ending struggles while aiming to the top, all of those ambitions were crushed within a couple of minutes. That was the sad reality of two friends who happened to reach the final stop of their lives; the peninsula of silence. The Void of emptiness..."

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"The Void?!" Nion was startled.

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'He knows...' A silent voice whispered insider her head.

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"Do you know what is the first thing you see after you die?" Samuel asked.

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"How could I possibly know that?" She shrugged her shoulders.

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Wisps of silver-grey smoke curled and danced their way to the dark sky. "Your memories... Thousands of them," Samuel replied.

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'Tell him!' The voices began hissing inside Nion's head like a snake. "He knows!"

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"The truth is; when you die, your soul leaves your physical envelope and is sent to the 'Realm Of The Void' where it awaits for the Transcendence," he resumed.

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"I..." Nion mumbled. 'Tell him how many times it happened! Tell him!' urged the irritating voices. Nion's head throbbed. The pain felt like someone had taken a knife to her skull.

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Samuel's head moved around to Nion's left ear, and he whispered. "I know that you have been there and that you keep coming back no matter what you do, because..."

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'Tell him, he knows! He knows everything!' The voices overlapped over each other. The rest of the world became detached. All Nion could do was concentrate on the pain that grew stronger each second they called. 'The Realm Of The Void', he knows! He has been there!' they yelled. Nion became blinded with flashing, colorful spots and craved darkness, quiet, and stillness.

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"You keep coming back to life because you cannot transcend," Samuel whispered.

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Never before had Nion noticed how time is so much like water; it can pass slowly, a drop at a time, even freeze. Samuel's last words had reverberated inside her head, causing an innumerable amount of memories to flashback like a thousand camera frames per second.

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'Its gonna be all right. I will take you out of here. I promise!' echoed a familiar voice somewhere in the distance. 'I am sorry... I am so sorry. It should not happen like that'.

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'Kill it... There is no way around,' echoed a male voice.

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In this slow time-bubble, the unknown voices grew louder, colors were reduced from bright to nothingness. Her insides felt as if there was nothing there, nothing to have need of anything at all.

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'I don't want to die...' someone cried in the distance.

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'Because now you want to be a fucken hero?!" someone else shouted from afar.

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The water started to pour in, softening the ground beneath her feet. "You cannot transcend..." Samuel's voice echoed somewhere far in the distance. The moment felt dull and stretched.

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'You are the one who did this...?' said a familiar voice.

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'Mommy, don't go...' cried a child's voice.

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Nion sank beneath the cold surface, arms dragging along the bottom of the dark waters. "Please... Forgive me..." she begged sincerely. "I thought I was doing the right thing... I was afraid; afraid of the consequences, the future I would have to face. I hid behind a mask of someone who was not me, but just below the surface of the facade I wore were deep-rooted fears. I blamed everything and everyone except myself even though no matter how many times I tried to wash my bloody hands, the blood would never go away." She stood, the water waist-deep; Samuel was gone, all the other sounds were gone too, she was once again alone, surrounded by the darkness, but it was different, there was something calm and warm about it.

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She had burst into tears. "I wish I could change the past, I wish I could restore your lives so your families could enjoy safety and security, but I cannot... I truly wish I could bring you back to life, all of you, somehow saying I'm sorry and begging for forgiveness for robbing your lives seems too small of a gesture, yet I volunteered to offer my life in exchange, but it seemed like you didn't want it..." she sobbed.

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'Enduring deepening pain is how you ascend,' a female voice resonated in the distance. 'Nobody can change or predict the future...'. 'You are not alone...' Seànn's voice echoed back to her.

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A bright, glowing, purple light had illuminated Nion's face while someone's arm had reached out and gently pulled her out of the water.

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"Creator, watch us..." Samuel soothed.

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The next second Nion was back in the small alley, holding Samuel in her arms.

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Nion slowly looked up at Samuel's face. "Creator, embrace us..." she said unconsciously.

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The look in Samuel's eyes had now completely changed compared to before, as though Nion was facing an utterly different person. His eyes were more than plain purple; there were flecks of strength, interwoven shades hiding the chaotic nature behind. Despite the same eye colors, his eyes seemed to hold such hatred and such beauty, all at once.

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"I imagine you are feeling confused," Samuel said.

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"You can say that..." she replied while slowly moving away from him. "Who are you, really?"

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"It does not matter who I am, but why I am here." After a short period of silence, he continued. "Do you believe in fate Nion?"

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"No, I don't... Why are you asking?" Nion replied, glaring into his purple glowing eyes.

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"Let me tell you the truth about fate; nothing happens without a reason. You are here because you know something... Something you cannot rationally explain, but you are feeling it. The Void made you remember parts of your life that he wanted you to forget,"Samuel responded.

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"Who is he? What are you talking about?" Nion asked confused.

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"When I first woke up, I thought I was the happiest man in the world. I could only think of it as a miracle of God that somehow I was the chosen one, blessed with a second chance, an opportunity to start over wherever I lost the track. But the reality was nothing like that. To me, I was absent a couple of days at most, wrong! It was dozens of years. The world I once inhabited had been ravaged by the madness of wars that had sparked everywhere around the globe because of the 'Gan' infection. My family, friends, nobody had survived the insanity that had been happening outside while I was detained in the facility." Samuel inhaled the smoke. "Death has an important meaning, and if we die, there is no accident or bad luck; we are simply destined to."

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"I am profoundly sorry for your experience and your family losses, but I am not sure I fully understand what is going on here and what does it have to do with me? I don't know what facility you are talking about and the Gan infection happened more than a half-century ago. I will repeat my question one last time: Who are you, and what do you want from me?" Nion insisted.

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"The clock is ticking," Samuel sighed. "If you don't remember anything, there is no point for me to be losing my time." He grabbed the handle and opened his suitcase, then handed Nion a sealed box with the handwritten title 'MINERVA.' "Take it!"

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"MINERVA?!" Just reading the box title gave Nion shivers and made her take a step back. Her nostrils were filled with a stagnant smell as if she stood next to a sink filled with disinfectant. An intense fear traveled in her veins, contracting her facial muscles. She looked at the box without turning her head, her heart hammering in her chest.

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"You said that you wanted to know about 'The Sixth Judgement.' This box contains all you need to know about Von Sixth's research: the Replicants, the facility and its patients, yourself, and your twin brother. It is all there, all the truth he thought he sealed away after he destroyed the old facility, everything is in there," he said.

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Nion's hand started shaking as she held the tiny box which had been sealed with multiple layers of scotch tape. "And if I say I don't want it?"

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Samuel grabbed his stuff from the ground and then looked over his shoulder. "You do!"

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"But why are you giving it to me? Why does it have to be me?" Nion suddenly started agonizing as Samuel walked away.

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The residual smoke from Samuel's cigarette hung in the air of the old metro station, shifting like ghosts in the breeze. It obscured the entrance like fog on a humid night. "Why?" Samuel sniggered. "Because I want to hurt him. I want to see him suffer and you were his favorite..."

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"He?! Who is 'he' you keep talking about?!" Nion shouted to Samuel's shadow which had almost disappeared in the darkness.

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"The same man who killed you and destroyed your family... Noah Von Sixth."