North of Charleston, WV. Monday, 20:23hrs EDT
From across the lawn Ben saw the second her chest exploded with the force of the bullet. He stumbled. Went down on one knee as his own chest seared in pain. The golem, or his own feelings? There wasn’t time to figure out which it was.
Men surrounded him. Half a dozen, at least. He didn’t take his eyes off Taya, so still on the grass. Dead? Please, God… Could he even ask that she be saved?
The barrel of an M4 poked his rib cage. “Get up.”
Ben didn’t take his gaze from Taya. The mark on his chest burned. Heat traveled to his fingertips. Toes. The top of his head. He pushed out a breath and sucked in cool night air as sweat rolled down the side of his face.
“I said up.” Another poke of the barrel. “Nice and slow. Nothing funny.”
His fingers twitched. No, he couldn’t rub his chest. That would give away a weakness. Ben braced and lifted himself to his feet. “Let me go over there. I can heal her.”
He didn’t know if he could bring back a dead person with his blood. Or someone close to death. He could try though. They had to let him try.
“Hands up.”
Ben swung around, grasped the gun. It went off even while his hand was wrapped around the barrel. He ignored the searing pain—just another to add to the list—and punched. Left hand into the man’s side, right hand on the gun. Air expelled from the man’s lips, and he squeezed the trigger again. Ben had the weapon aimed at one of his buddies.
That guy dropped.
Ben swung for the next man. A shot went off from another gun. Fire ran through his calf. He punched the owner of the weapon he held. His grip loosened. Ben swung the M4 up and depressed the trigger once. Twice.
Taser prongs touched his ankle. Ben’s leg gave out. He fired twice more. Pain shot through his shoulder.
The Taser moved to his arm.
Then his chest.
None of it compared to the burn in his chest.
The weapon fell to the grass. The same grass where she bled out, to far away for him to reach her. His hands were pulled behind his back. One boot pressed into the wound on his leg, another on his shoulder. Black suffused his vision for a two count. Three. Light came back. Ben’s face was pressed against the ground. With one eye he could see a flashlight. The silhouette of a man stood in front of the house. Pain ricocheted around his head. It was like looking straight at the sun. Ben winced, shut his eyes against the blinding light.
“Alvarez?” The voice was male, one of the gunmen. Also, hopeful.
Another answered, “Gone.” No hope.
A boot kicked at Ben’s ribs. He groaned. Steel-toed.
They hauled him to his feet. Ben’s right leg gave out. They didn’t let him fall. “Walk.” He put weight on the leg again and bit down on his molars. It should have healed already. Was the golem destroyed?
He couldn’t lift his head to glance back. Taya. Was she alive?
The men forced him to trudge to the house while blood ran down his calf. Soaked the leg of his jeans, his sock, and boot.
Those boots found stone, then a rug. He cracked open his eyes. The skin around his right eye was swollen. Every breath felt like fire. Cracked ribs—or broken. The light in the house started a migraine.
Down the hall, he left a blood trail all the way to an office where they tossed him on the floor. The Teacher had a face that was fifty percent rodent, fifty percent Armin Shimerman—but without the Ferengi ears. Currently he was ruining the pristine fabric on an antique couch with the blood that ran from his chest.
This was the man who had orchestrated a mission. Involved the Tiller brothers. Destroyed lives. He didn’t look powerful. Just sadistic. Evil didn’t live on a person’s face, it lived in the heart. Ben of all people knew that. It wasn’t something that could be changed, covered over, or healed. Evil permeated everything until it sucked dry all that was good and twisted it for its own gain.
The Teacher’s chest was covered with a blood-soaked bandage. “You have to bring him closer.” His voice was weak, and he motioned equally as weakly at Ben. “Closer.”
Beside him stood Elaine. Ben’s eyes narrowed. She took a step back, wrung her fingers. Latex gloves on her hands. Her face, pale.
The men he hadn’t managed to kill hauled him up by his armpits. Hired gunmen, or more acolytes? They dumped him closer to the couch.
His head bounced off the floor, and pain shot through him. Ben hissed out another breath and mustered what strength he had left. Sweat dampened his shirt. “Is it hot in here, or is it just me?”
The Teacher ignored his question. He reached down with one hand, fingers trembling. Ben lifted his head from the hardwood and shifted so he could see the man, not just his fingers.
His face was kind of green around the edges. The wound in his chest was probably nasty. “Bad day?”
The Teacher snorted. Winced.
“Who did this?”
“One of your friends.”
Ben managed a small smile. “I don’t think we’ve been officially introduced.”
“The time for the pleasantries will be later. When I’m not bleeding.” His clammy fingers touched Ben’s neck, just above his shirt. Ben couldn’t move to stop him when the bindings on his hands pulled his shoulders to the point they screamed. Any more and they’d dislocate altogether. He wanted to fight. To wiggle himself across the floor, out of reach.
One of the gunmen kicked him closer to the couch.
Purely to distract himself, Ben said, “So you’ve called an ambulance? Taya needs a hospital.” That was the default. Call 9-1-1, get help.
He could save her, if they let him. “Or I can heal her with my blood. I can heal you, too, probably. I’ll do it for you. If you bring her in here.”
The Teacher said nothing.
“I can. I’ll heal you.”
“There will be no bargain between us.” His lips moved, and he muttered low, foreign words. Hebrew. The same language he’d heard Roger Stilson speak.
“Don’t do that.” Whatever he was doing, it wasn’t going to end well.
Back then it had been merely a recitation, like kids repeating words they’d heard but didn’t understand. The Teacher meant every syllable. Passion infused his words. Or perhaps just the desire to live and not die.
His lips curled up and he continued. An incantation. A spell. No, a prayer. Full of faith. The Teacher believed everything he was saying.
A tug began in his chest. Ben looked down. “What…”
The mark above his heart seared like he’d been stuck with a hot poker. He cried out. His toes went cold. His fingertips.
Heat was pulled from the ends of his body, toward the mark. A rush of energy. His life force. The tug increased to a steady wrenching. Strength and energy moved from his body…into the Teacher. Color returned to his rat-like face. Pain lines around his eyes smoothed, and the Teacher blew out a slow breath. “I feel it. Is it working?”
Elaine came closer. She tugged at the bandages and revealed a jagged wound. “It’s closing.”
Before his eyes, the edges knit back together. Like Mei’s wound. Taya. He had to get to her. The Teacher could tell him how to save her. Or bring her back. Whichever it was. In return, Ben would do whatever the Teacher asked.
He opened his mouth but couldn’t speak. Strength drained from him like an arterial bleed.
His head sank back onto the hardwood. He couldn’t lift even one finger. “Taya.” Her name was a whisper on his lips.
“God has healed me. It was His will that this creature came into being, and its strength has given me life.” The couch creaked as he sat up.
“Taya.” Ben managed a groan.
“She thought to end my life, but I have prevailed.” The Teacher said, “Where is she?”
One of the men said, “Probably bled out on the grass by now. I wouldn’t worry about her.”
“Go. Check.”
“Yes, sir.” His footsteps retreated from the room.
The Teacher had pulled the golem’s energy—his life force—from Ben. He’d healed himself. They could do the same for Taya. He could have healed Mei so much faster if he’d known that.
A tear rolled from the corner of his eye down to the hair above his ear.
Instead, all Roger’s knowledge had been lost in Ben’s mind. Gone, until Elaine had drugged him and the flashbacks started. He was never going to thank her. Their actions had destroyed his ordered life, his job, and family and turned everything upside down. All for their own gain, for the Teacher’s end. This had nothing to do with God’s will. Contrary to what the Teacher had said, healing himself using the golem was the Teacher’s will. Ben didn’t think any of this had much to do with God.
Perhaps He should intervene. But this was their mess, so why did He need to? Ben didn’t really know how all that worked. What he did know was that he couldn’t do anything. There was no strength in his muscles, so he lay there on the floor while his brain ran a mile a minute trying to reason everything out.
Where had being cautious, thinking things through, ever gotten him? It had lost him Taya. Cost him Mei. The only good thing in his life was that day, back in first grade, when he’d come home and told his mom he would marry Taya when they grew up.
Ben shivered. The only warmth in him, the mark, widened to envelop his sternum. The same spot where Taya’s chest had opened from the force of the bullet. There was no way she could have survived. Not after an injury like that. Except for that one spot, he felt like a human Popsicle. His whole body jerked with the next shiver. Like the energy was still being sucked from him. Was he keeping the Teacher healthy still, even though the man had finished the prayer thing he’d done?
“What do we do with him?” Elaine’s voice held an acceptable amount of fear. Was she planning to finish the work she’d started the last time they were together? She should be scared. Ben wasn’t going to tolerate more experiments. Not again. And he wasn’t going to let her point a gun at him, either.
He felt the golem then. That will to destroy in the name of justice. It filled him, soaked through his muscles.
Black lines snaked across Ben’s vision. Images flashed through his mind. A man fell off a cliff to his death. Another slumped into a seat. One screamed in his face. Tried to run. Ben grabbed him, snapped his neck.
The Teacher and Elaine continued to speak. He couldn’t make out the words more than a blur of voices.
Ben shut his eyes as visions continued behind his eyelids. He couldn’t even open them. In a minute, would he lack the strength to breathe? Still the warmth flickered behind his breastbone.
The voices penetrated his thoughts.
“Look at him.” Fingers touched his cheek. Lifted his shirt. “It’s everywhere now. Spreads like a virus through the host. It’s really fascinating.”
“The will of the golem is not a virus,” the Teacher said. “It is a gift to the world. Now come, there isn’t much time to—”
Gunshots rang from outside.
A man screamed.
More gunshots.
“What if they can’t contain the golem?” Elaine asked.
“It does not matter. We have Mr. Mason. The golem will do whatever I ask it to.”
“Will it kill those men?”
“Hired guns? You shouldn’t care so much, Elaine. It will be your downfall.”
Someone lifted Ben’s legs and began to drag him across the floor.
“I was told it made me a better doctor.”
The Teacher sighed. “Our task requires complete commitment. Your feelings will guide you to make mistakes.”
“Like trying to kill him?”
“The heart is desperately wicked, Elaine. You cannot trust it. You must set aside your feelings and trust in God’s will. The golem was created to walk the earth, to bring justice for our people. For you. For your mother’s death. It was not the weapon that killed her, but the will that pointed the weapon and pulled the trigger. Your foe is stronger, as you have realized your frailty. Next you will face the ultimate test: it is up to you to bring us to our final goal.”
Ben poured every ounce of strength he had left into trying to move. It was useless. He was dragged down a hall. Bumped down a flight of stairs. Another examination room, like the one he’d been held in before. They had better not hook him up to that IV again.
But what could he do about it? There was nothing inside him but the golem and its need to kill. The will to act was useless without the strength to carry it out. What did it matter what happened to him? What they did to him. He shouldn’t care, so long as Taya might be alive.
To the end. To his last breath, he would protect them. Help them. Heal them. The golem could take everything he had. Ben pushed all his will toward the heat and prayed the golem knew what he wanted.
Would it even work, when so much of his strength had been used to heal the teacher?
He could suck Ben dry if it saved her.