667: Issue #7 Pt. 2 "The Seventh Son"

Nightmares again.

I had had one the night before that was still eluding me, but this one was clear.

We were all mid-battle with Apollyon and I was crouched down by Asher as he carved something in the dust. Instead of paying attention to the fight, I watched his every move from start to finish.

Asher looked like he was in a trance as he jabbed his staff into the ground and the seal illuminated with a bright red light.

It was then that I could see the sigil fully.

I tried to commit the lines and letters to memory so that when I woke up, I could draw it all out.

I grabbed a pen from my bag and flipped through my sketch pad to find a blank page as the image kept flashing in my brain.

Pen to paper let it all flesh out. It was rough, but it pretty much looked like what I could remember from the nightmare.

“Abaddon.” I turned the page in a full circle to study what I had drawn. The design looked vaguely familiar and the name written around the circle did as well.

It was a Goetic seal, that much I knew, but it was one that I had never seen before. I had studied them over the past few years while doing research for my books, but I had never really given them much thought otherwise.

Why had Asher created a sigil for a Demon that wasn’t the one he was fighting and how had it even worked? Not to mention how he even knew about the symbol in the first place.

I had this sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach since the night before, but now I felt completely weighed down.

“Henri might recognize this.” I folded it up and changed my clothes before stuffing it in my pocket.

I was just getting ready to leave the room when the door cracked open.

“Josiah wants to meet with us downstairs; I think he wants to go over the blood work.” Adam popped his head through.

“Did I sleep late?” I hoped that I hadn’t wasted the day.

“Not at all; everyone is just finishing breakfast, but I saved you a plate.” He winked at me before disappearing into the hall.

(*)

“Sit, sit. If we keep collecting more of you like this, we are going to have to get a bigger table.” Josiah laughed, but I didn’t find the joke funny.

“Sorry it took so long to get the results back; the lab was swamped.” Leo pulled out a folder and began shuffling through the papers. I was starting to wonder exactly what he did for a living.

“We’ve got all the time in the world.” Adam propped his feet up on the table; he knew that Josiah hated that.

“So, I ran a DNA test on all of us to compare and contrast…and looking at my profile compared to Josiah’s, or Franklin’s, or Cassandra’s—they all look normal. And then we looked at your samples and to be honest, I have no idea what I am looking at. My best guess is that your DNA was broken and then rebuilt, which in and of itself is fairly normal within the body, but your breaks were different. I don’t know if it had anything to do with that mitogen, but the irreparable damage done to the cells can result in tumors. That would explain what happened to those people at the cemetery; they didn’t just suddenly develop cancer, but that mitogen caused such rapid damage that their bodies couldn’t keep up with the repair. Your bodies are different, however. I think that the inhibitor serum that was injected into your embryos kept your true selves contained, but it must have had a particular detonation time: your 30th birthday.

The inhibitor dissolved, or exploded when the mitogen was absorbed into your bodies. This triggered massive cell division and you incurred the breaks in your DNA from this. Necrosis occurred, killing the cells, but this is what is weird…something new was activated in your DNA. I assume it was dormant and I don’t know what it is, but had your cells been normal we would consider it a mutation. The dead cells were reborn? Resurrected? Maybe they replicated too many times— I don’t even know the right term, but your cells aren’t the same anymore.” Leo showed us a copy of his sequenced DNA and then a copy of mine; I didn’t really know what I was looking for, but I could tell that they were vastly different.

“So, you’re saying that we just spontaneously evolved?” I think I understood what he was saying.

“Maybe? Either that or the human side of your DNA died and was replaced with something else entirely. There are proteins in here that I have never seen before; we don’t even have a name for them.” Leo shrugged before gathering his pages back into their folder.

“Like alien DNA? Not from this world?” Adam looked baffled as he asked his question.

“Well, it definitely isn’t something we’ve found on Earth, but I’m not thinking it has anything to do with little green men.” Leo shook his head.

“We did find ourselves an old Macintosh, however, and it is being delivered today. We will hopefully be able to read more of the files than Violet already has. That may finally give us some answers.” Josiah interjected.

I looked at the faces of everyone around the table. They were all in equal stages of shock; the worst seemed to be Asher who just couldn’t put it all together.

“Good.” I finally spoke, “This is good. Another step closer, even if we don’t understand what it all means. None of us are scientists, save for maybe Leo, so this all is a little confusing. We can do more research and see what we come up with.” I threw in my two pence worth.

“We can do all the research we want, but your chemical makeup is novel; there is nothing like it. Whoever engineered the six-hundred-and-sixty-seven of you was using DNA that has never been documented before by humankind. We are going to have to find the source somehow.” Leo narrowed his vision in on me.

“Then we find someone involved. Maybe that should be our next move.” Adam interrupted, taking the words right out of my mouth.

“Sounds like a good idea, but we have to keep our eyes out for more of your kind too. Things have been all too quiet lately and we have been watching the news, but nothing interesting has reared its head.” Josiah wanted to keep looking for more of us, but he wasn’t looking in the right places.

“You’re looking on too small of a scale; remember that the webbing was found all over the globe. More of us may be hiding here…or maybe we are the only ones in the states.” I pointed out his mistake.

“Global…I didn’t even consider it even though the evidence was right in front of my face.” Josiah had actually admitted that he was wrong.

“I’m sure you get BBC Two over here; get to watching and see if anything looks suspicious in the UK.” I had a sudden rush of nostalgia.

I’m sure there were others over there like us; I would have been one of them had I not come across the pond—and maybe I could go home for a bit if we found anyone on that side.

“Good idea.” There was this expression on Josiah’s face that I had never seen before: was it respect?

“Violet, I would like if you would look over some of the files with me when we get the computer in. You seem to have a knack for all of this stuff; writer or not.” He pointed at me.

If I hadn’t wanted to look over those files so bad, I would have thought he was taking the piss and left it at that.

“Sure; I would actually really like that.” I tried not to sound too enthusiastic.

“Then it’s set. Before I release you all to run amuck on the grounds, I need to get a blood sample off Asher here. We have sent out for Naomi’s and taken a swab from—” He glanced at me, “From 102. We want to keep a catalogue of everyone, just in case we need it.” Josiah finished.

I had told him about Missy’s file number and mine, but that was as far as I really went.

“Sure.” Asher nodded and Leo motioned for him to follow as they walked over towards a lab set up in the corner of the room with empty vials and syringes.

“All of you can scoot; I’ll let Violet know when the computer arrives.” Josiah flicked his wrists at us and we all filed out into the hallway.

“They want to catalogue us?” Adam spoke quietly as he and I split from the love birds and wandered off towards the sun-room.

“I mean, it might be a good idea. That way everyone is accounted for as we find them and we can compile a complete list of all of us. The files in that box are going to be old, but what we need to find are the more recent profiles on us like the one I found online.” A thought had just struck me. I needed to find out whoever had sent my file to that blog. If they had mine—maybe they had more.

“I’ll leave you be, then. Get to work, Sherlock Holmes.” Adam nudged me before exiting the room.

Might as well grab my magnifying glass and get to sleuthing…