Bursting with anticipation, Cain seemed almost giddy at that thought. It was like having a bomb straining to explode in the back of her mind. She could not help but think that he knew something she didn’t about her prisoner.
Stepping to Jonathan’s side, the Apostle leaned over him, staring into his strange, bestial eyes. Stirring, Cain moved forward until he was right behind her eyes, staring into Jonathan’s soul. Though he tried to struggle at first, the combined gaze of the Apostle and Cain soon mesmerized him. Intuitively, she knew the darkness that lay at the heart of every living being. All of his fears, resentments, hatreds, and annoyances, were laid out before her like an open book. She did not understand much of it, but she didn’t have to in order to exploit it.
“Poor Jonathan,” she cooed at him. “Always one of a pair, but never an
individual. You hate that Michael has your face and that everyone treats the two of you as a single person. You were born first after all. And if wearing your face wasn’t bad enough, he’s the one that always has the good ideas. He got the brains, and you got nothing. Those ideas should be yours. You’re jealous of him, and resentful of him. If he were gone, no one would ever mistake you for someone else. No one would ever refer to you as only half of a pair again. You want to kill him, because if he had never been born, you could have been so much more. Kill him. I command you to kill your brother and return to me.”
“That’s a really neat trick,” Jonathan chuckled, “but it’s easy enough to defeat.”
“Impossible,” the Apostle spat. Only the insane had been able to shrug off Cain’s control so easily!
“What you say does make a sort of morbid sense. Of course I’m resentful of my brother from time to time. He’s my brother! It’s like a commandment from god. Thou shalt periodically be annoyed by thy siblings! It’s a fact of life. My sister gives me a hell of a lot more trouble than he ever will. Sure I’m resentful that no one ever thinks of me as an individual. Maybe he achieves a little more than I do. But you know what? I love my brother. He’s like half of myself. I couldn’t live, knowing I’d killed him, because it was his pushing me to become better, and striving always to outdo him that made me who I am. You see much, but you understand nothing. All it takes to break your silly mind trick is a little strength of will.”
“You –”
“So then,” Jonathan winked. “Do you like Cora? I could pick another name for you if you prefer, but I really think that Cora fits you even better than Mara does.”
Staring, the Apostle was almost certain that he was mad. That was the only explanation. He was a raving lunatic. That had to be how he fended off her powers.
“Cora it is, then. How about a kiss to commemorate the day you received your
very own name, Cora?”
Bringing his head up abruptly, he pressed his lips to hers.
Stumbling back in startlement, the Apostle brought a hand up to her lips and
wiped them free of his saliva before giving him her sternest glare.
“What? Why did you? You will never touch me in such a way again!”
With that she strode forward and drove her gauntleted fist into his face with all of her strength, knocking him senseless.
Breathing hard, the Apostle could not remember ever having so much trouble
controlling her anger. Forcing calm, she lifted her hood back to cover her wolf ears and replaced her mask. Doing so felt like replacing a part of herself that she’d lost.
Cain howled with laughter.
Without any visible effort at all, the prisoner had been able to completely and totally frustrate her to the point of showing open anger. Even bolted down to a table and stripped of every shred of clothing, he’d been the clear victor of their confrontation. She knew too little about social interactions, ignoring such things as unimportant and irrelevant to her mandate, and her true, hidden desires.
Fuming over her failure, the Apostle needed more experience in social situations to even come close to understanding this fool! She needed to observe how humans acted with one another. She needed to learn. If she met many more people that could break her control so easily, she needed to learn other ways of controlling them. She needed to understand what Jonathan had been saying to her, and why. If she had any clue as to what his comments and actions were designed to do, she could better control her anger and frustration while dealing with him in the future.
Wanting to shout in frustration, the Apostle knew no word with enough strength to convey her emotion.
“Males!” she decided on, and that seemed good enough.
Leaving the cell, she turned to Yuri, the guard outside. Being a big bear of a man, he had a special governmental license for his non-conformity in size. He was an excellent questioner, and his size invoked quite a bit of fear in people who believed that all things should be uniform and unchanging.
“Find out where he came from, and anything else you can dig out of him,” the
Apostle ordered. “I want to know everything about him. Find out what he knows about beings that he calls Heretics. Use any means necessary except electric shocks. He has an extremely low tolerance, and you might unwittingly kill him.”
“Yes Apostle,” Yuri bowed. “It shall be as you command.”
Eyeing Yuri for a second, the Apostle wondered if he thought that she was a male as well? Unable to tell from his behavior, she supposed that it did not matter so long as he followed orders.
Chapter 18: Control
Pacing up and down her office, the Apostle of Cain realized that she was counting steps rather than thinking about what to do with her prisoner, forcing herself to stop. It was not long afterward that she realized she’d begun counting each time she crossed the room and growled in frustration.
Out of the thousands of males she’d met, the Apostle could not understand how
this one could frustrate her so completely. As the last of the Subjects she’d thought herself unique, but that was no longer true, and she didn’t quite know how she felt about that. It was somewhat troubling. Though they’d come into being through highly different processes, they seemed very similar. As like beings, she should be able to understand him, but he made even less sense than the humans did!
These thoughts should not have shaken her so, but she could not stop thinking
about him. Unable to understand why, or what she was feeling, she felt as though she was falling through a maelstrom, unable to tell up from down. It was almost as though he’d kicked her in the head, and turned half of what she’d believe about herself upside down.
Sighing deeply, the Apostle sat on the edge of her desk. Why was she so
obsessed with this one male? It didn’t make any sense to her. She had no doubt that she could bring Jonathan around to joining her eventually. The problem was that she had grown lazy over centuries of travel and conquest. Few people could resist her powers of persuasion. In relying so heavily upon them, she’d neglected learning any other way of bending a person to her will. Keeping him close and restrained was probably the best course of action until she could think of something else.
Once Jonathan saw the importance of her vendetta against the Council, he might be reasonable and join her of his own free will. They were both Subjects. Perhaps he would feel some sort of obligation to help her. Perhaps if he could see her at work, and how powerful she was, he would come around.
Standing, the Apostle walked around her desk and dropped into her chair, pulling up the holographic computer interface. Perhaps seeing him again would help her to think of how to deal with him. After typing commands into the glowing keyboard hovering above her desk, a camera feed from the interrogation room winked on at eye level. Biting back a curse, she saw that Yuri was removing the bolts from Jonathan’s restraints! She could not believe that she’d missed an infiltrator so high up in the ranks!