Page 25 of The White Rider
“Could Dice build something just to knock everyone out, so no one dies trying to round these assholes up?”
“Yeah, but Leif would need a lab to brew up something that would knock everyone out without killing them like that. The resistance doesn’t have one of those. Your father only cares about the ammunition factory we’re planning to hit because many of those bullets go to guard his labs. Everyone thinks he’s saving the world with those labs, but we know the truth. Hitting up the munitions factory will be hard, but conquering one of his labs long enough for Leif to do his magic is going to be impossible.”
“You’re the Horseman of Conquest, so I believe you if you say it’s impossible to take one of his labs. We’re going to have to, eventually. The Bubbas kidnapped some of those scientists. Even the ones that weren’t probably don’t want to be working on something that will make things worse, right?”
“Yes, they would. Think about Mae and all those horrible things she said and did. If they think it’s needed to trigger the Rapture and Isaiah will then lead them all to Heaven, they’ll take use all their education and scientific knowledge to kill everyone else on this planet.”
“Okay, so I barely passed every single science class I ever took, and I was miserable at math, but aren’t most people who like that shit super into facts and evidence? Last I checked The Book of Revelations hasn’t been peer-reviewed!”
“You could say it has been now. The dead rose and walked the Earth. Many people think the Rage Mutation was Pestilence released by China. After the war, it took a while for things to grow, so there was famine. Governments fell, and dictators took over. Things have never gone this far before. Even the hardcore scientists can’t explain things logically. A few minutes with Leif would clear everything up, but Isaiah keeps them isolated.
“They wouldn’t have heard Dice on the radio talking about the water supplement being the cause. Isaiah would have someone in there pushing propaganda on them just like Mae was doing with those women. Unlike Mae, Leif won’t have to show his wings. We have flash drives full of hard evidence.”
“I went through some of them that Aeron stole from the facility they had me in after they kidnapped me. I don’t know what that Doctor X’s excuse was for doing all that shit to me. He started when I was just a child and was one of the chief scientists that engineered the Rage Mutation from my blood.”
Asher just shrugged.
“Money and curiosity. You saw how angry I got when people do despicable things and claim they are doing them for my father. Leif is the same way when people do dangerous things with science just to see what will happen. Your father asked Doctor X to create zombies and said he would provide him with blood to make it happen. Zombies have always been fiction. Doctor X probably took the job just to be the first person to do it, so he could brag about it.”
“Some of the first things I remembered after Aeron got me out of that hospital were the things they did to me when I was a kid… horrible things. Curiosity doesn’t excuse that. I might be rotten at science, but I know things shouldn’t be done freely to patients, you need consent. I said I didn’t want to do it, and if I fought when Isaiah dropped me off, they’d just sedate me to get me back there without a fight. They needed me petrified for what they were doing.”
Asher finally looked at me like he gave a shit about why I needed to be there when they killed my father.
“Leif told me that Isaiah used your blood to make the Rage Mutation and that he brought you to labs when you were a kid, but before you went missing, you never went into all the details with Leif and Aeron. You always told them it was horrible, and you didn’t want to talk about it. You could say I’m bad at the science crap, just like you are, so I never poured through the notes Dice found like Leif did. Aeron wouldn’t understand them either. I think he read them just to piss himself off while you were missing.”
“Do you at least get why I need to be there now? Aeron killed Doctor X, so I never got closure. I need him to look me in the eye and know that after everything he did to create me and everything he did to me when I was a child to create the Rage Mutation, despite all of that I still came for him in the end. I want him to know that I was part of the team that stopped him.”
Asher sighed, and I felt like he finally saw me. I wasn’t his brother’s girlfriend, who was just in his way. I had a vested interest in seeing this stopped.
“I get it, Ariel. Can you promise me something?”
“What?”
“Don’t let your emotions get the best of you. He’s a nasty piece of work. When it comes down to him versus us, he’s going to be outnumbered and overpowered. He will fight dirty, which means he will try to use you to escape or go somewhere to summon his father to protect him. He will do or sayanythingto complete his mission. He’s more afraid of Satan than he is of us. If he fails, he has a whole eternity of torture in store for him, and he knows that.”
I started laughing.
“I’d be more afraid of Aeron and whatever Dice builds to take him out.”
“Aeron really likes to kill things, and Dice has come up with a few doozies, but all of that is nothing compared to what they do to people in Hell. With us, it’s eventually over, and you die. In Hell, it’s nonstop torture that you never get a break from. Satan never says,hey, let’s stop torturing that one.To get this close and fail right at the end isn’t going to get a participation trophy from the devil. He’s going to be pissed.”
“Aeron thought he wanted me dead but he wiped my memories instead.”
“Did anyone explain to you that your mother is the only reason you started getting them back? If your mother had been human, well, you would have been a drooling mess when you woke up. You’re the first of your kind, so I’m guessing that was the intention. It would have been the only reason he agreed if he wanted you dead.”
I’d been around three angels who I thought had told me everything, but none of them had let that detail slip. I would have thought Aeron would have told me when I was getting angry with him for keeping things from me. When Leif introduced himself as the Horseman of Pestilence, and they finally started filling me in on precisely what the fuck was going on, neither of them told me that.
“Why didn’t your brothers tell me that? All I know about her is that she was an angel and a Harbinger.”
“They might not have reached the same conclusion I did. We all can wipe memories too. We never do though, because it ends up destroying a human’s mind. During a different time, my father took offense at Nephilim. He threw their parents into the pits of Hell and sent armies of angels after them. We played nopartin that, but I heard stories.
“One angelthat was sent felt bad for one of the Nephilim children. He didn’t know if a mind wipe would do the same thing it did to humans, but he tried it anyway.”
“What happened?”
“Oh, another angel found out and killed the Nephilim before we knew if his mind went to goo.”
Cute story. Was that supposed to be some sort of pep talk? It was about as shitty as Aeron’s pep talks. What if someone got pissed off I was dating three of the Four Horsemen and sent an army of angels after my happy ass?
