Gabriel’s Watch - Book One: The Scrapman Trilogy (30 page)

“This mark, by itself, means absolutely nothing,” Gabriel began, “because it is encrypted.” He tapped a portion of the hologram as it lit up and expanded, revealing a whole slew of unrecognizable, alien data—just a meaningless assortment of exotic symbols and characters. Gabriel then tapped it again as the data twisted and twined together, creating the familiar assembly of a double helix. “I trust you know what this is.”

“A DNA strand,” Alice said.

“Correct,” Gabriel nodded, “but whose?”

She pointed to her chest. “Mine.”

Gabriel shook his head as Alice’s brow furrowed.

“Then whose?” she asked.

The Traveler stuck a pale finger toward me, smiling to the point that I could see the tiny and flat fragments of white making up his upper row of teeth. “His,” he revealed, then crossed his long arms defiantly. “And now, Miles, is when I’d like to hear your theories on luck.”

I could not yet comprehend what he was telling us. “Why is my DNA inscribed on her?”

“Not just
on
her,” Gabriel corrected, “but
in
her as well.” He laughed again, an unpleasant sound. “How sad to think that—this whole time—you have based your entire meeting on simply luck. You haven’t given yourself nearly enough credit, Miles. There was no coincidence there; of all the survivors left, it was
you
that was chosen.”

As I wove the new information through those initial first days, it was all beginning to make sense. Alice had always said she never remembered walking off that huge freighter— that her first memory was wandering the inner city. That had always puzzled me, until now.

“So you saw me fit to be her guardian, then dropped her onto the street for me to find?”

Gabriel shook his head with a twinge of frustration. “I can tell you do not understand the lengths that I have gone. You are not just her guardian, Miles. Every aspect of you, physically and psychologically, is at her core. Don’t you see?” Gabriel reached out, pressing his fingers to my temples, “Do you remember this?”

I nodded, “Yeah.” It was what the purple Traveler had done ten years before. “Did he read my mind?”

“Not exactly,” Gabriel shook his head. “The Travelers are not psychic. We cannot read your mind, but we can download your memories.”

Gabriel released me. “That is what the Traveler did, he scanned your mind and gathered a sample of your DNA.” His lips curved into another smile. “Then I intercepted the data. This is how I knew you were the perfect recipient, how I knew that you would protect her.”

He extended one of his colossal arms to place on Alice’s shoulder. “Because, she was
made
for you.”

Mohammad entered the large room, coming in through an adjacent side-hatch. “It’s done,” he said to Gabriel as the Traveler nodded.

“Very good,” he said, then turned back to us. “Alice, there will be a confused, pregnant girl waking up here in a few minutes, and I want someone to greet her when she does; but, given her history, I don’t think it wise to be a man, and I definitely don’t think it should be me.”

Alice nodded.

“I think she’ll be able to relate to you, and eventually confide in you ... more so than anyone else. I want you to make her feel ... safe here.”

Alice continued to nod as Gabriel instructed her to follow Mohammad. The Fijian then led her out of the large room and ultimately to the bedside of Hazel, leaving me and Gabriel alone.

He looked at me once the hatch slid shut behind Alice, taking in a steady breath.

I looked up at the massive Traveler, but Gabriel’s black eyes made him nearly impossible to read. He just looked angry to me, but I wasn’t sure.

“Miles,” he started, “there’s something else I have to talk to you about, and I thought it best that Alice not be here for it.”

The mood grew immediately somber as I leaned against one of the tables, trying to mask my discomfort. “Okay,” I said.

“We have been here a long time, Miles, longer than you know. The tides of Earth are in need of drastic change, and that is by no fault of your own. That is what the Travelers are doing here.”

I shook my head, “I’m waiting for you to continue.”

Gabriel smirked a bit. “Curious species humans turned out to be,” he said, “and something separated you from the other species we have seen. Humans, in their early development, harnessed the ability for arrogance far before compassion; some Travelers even believe the latter has never been fully developed—at least not by an intelligent society’s standards—while arrogance has been beyond perfected.”

“I believe that,” I agreed.

“So we have left the remaining humans alone, for our code does not permit us to bring harm to your kind. Still we believe, with the coming of a more advanced race, that the human species will simply fade away—replaced by something far better.”

I nodded. After living with Alice for so long, he wouldn’t get any disagreement from me. I’d be the first to concur with this statement: Humanity—as a whole—was a piece of shit.

“Good,” Gabriel said, “then there is just one last thing.” He cleared his throat slightly. “Most of the humans who have survived here, however primitively, have been resourceful, even those who have survived solely through fear, but none have been more resourceful than you. There lies only one substantial difference between you and the rest of your kind here.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Every human here has survived on his or her own,” Gabriel continued, “every human but you.”

My brow furrowed. “What do you mean? No one survives on their own.”

“You misunderstand,” he said. “I have been keeping you alive, Miles. All these years, through all the raccoons and everything Mohammad has brought you, I have been giving you ... treatments. We had to be sure first, of course, that they would have no ill effect on Alice, but I am afraid, without them, you would not have survived.”

I put my palms flat on the table and tried to let the reality sink in, but I wasn’t quite sure what
reality
was anymore. What did this news mean, anyway?

“What do you mean, ‘treatments’?”

“Miles, you have cancer. You have had the disease for many years.”

“Why would you choose me, then?” I asked. “Why would you go to all this trouble for a dying man?”

“We needed you to fulfill your purpose,” Gabriel clarified, “and originally we did not think it would take you ten years to do so.”

“Why not cure me? You fixed my broken ribs, what’s the difference?”

“As far as the Travelers are concerned, humans are already dead. I was allowed to slow your cancer, but not free your body of it. Your broken ribs posed a more immediate danger than your sickness ever did.”

I was afraid to ask this next question: “Why are you telling me all this now?”

Gabriel paused for a moment, then said, “Because we have finally extracted life from this place, and, after all these years, you have finally fulfilled your purpose.” There was another long and awkward pause before the Traveler spoke again, but when he did, I discovered the pause had not been nearly long enough. “And now the treatments will stop,” Gabriel announced, “because, I am afraid you are no longer necessary.”

And with the tactless nature in which he chose to share my fate, I understood, beyond the shadow of a doubt, what it was Gabriel was telling me. Hazel was currently in the other room, with Alice at her side, but there was yet another reason Gabriel wished to keep them together, something else the two women shared.

They were both with child.

Gabriel was instructed to keep me alive just long enough to get Alice pregnant; after that, I was no longer useful in the grand scheme of things.

“I wanted to tell you this alone,” Gabriel started, “because I have been inside your mind, Miles. I have seen your memories, your family, and I do not think you are opposed to the idea of letting go ... the idea of leaving Alice in stronger hands than your own.”

I felt my eyes welling with tears. “Something tells me I don’t have a choice, Gabriel.”

“You are human, Miles. You knew this day would come eventually.”

I could no longer talk. With Alice in the other room, there was no one I needed to be strong for at the moment. Gabriel placed a hand on my shoulder before he walked away, and his touch felt genuinely warm. I appreciated the fact that he’d said nothing more. His silence spoke louder than any words I would have cared to hear.

There was an unspoken respect as he left me in the dark, alone with the crisp sound of Zeke’s distant surgery—a surreal setting for a man to accept the coming of his own death.

T
he following is from Alice’s perspective. I was not present.

Alice trailed Mohammad through the corridors of the Vahana. “I’m sorry it had to come to that, Mohammad,” she offered, apologizing for her conduct at Cherrybrook, although she still felt there had been no other option.

“Yes,” Mohammad said firmly, “but I get the feeling Gabriel expected as much from you. It was not just reckless on your part, but his as well.”

“What did he mean when he said he sent you to clean up our mess?”

“The women,” Mohammad said. “He sent me to take care of the women.”

“What do you mean?”

“After you
demolished
the place, there was no point in leaving them there anymore, so I brought them some clothes and had them follow me back through the door.”

“They’re on the ship?”

“No,” Mohammad laughed, “I took them close to Dingy Pete’s. They will be discovered there by Saint John and his gang—the guys that were going to kill themselves doing what you already did.”

Alice couldn’t keep herself from smiling. It spread easily across her face and she wore it like a badge of honor. It was her actions, however unplanned or chaotic, that had released them. Thanks to her they’d be getting another stab at normalcy, whatever that was, and for that she felt an immense pride expanding within her.

Then another notion rose in her mind, one that almost brought a tear to her eye:

Now, if one of those women were to die, they were in a place where they would be missed.

That seemed to be a comforting thought for people near death’s door—to know their names would still be on the lips of those they loved. That’s all any of us really want in the end, right?

They came to a door as Mohammad turned back to Alice, stepping aside so she could enter.

“She will be waking soon,” he said. “I will be watching, so just let me know if you need anything.”

“Okay.” Alice discovered she was nervous. Hazel was beyond that door, a girl she didn’t even know, and Alice was sent to make small-talk. She didn’t think herself a good candidate for small-talk, with anyone other than me, and certainly not with a pregnant fourteen-year-old girl.

There was a conditioned calmness that would usually come to sooth her nerves and steady her hands in other, more dangerous scenarios. But now, when her life didn’t even depend on it, she found her pulse raised and her palms sweaty, curious that a social endeavor could appear more frightening than anything else she’d been through that night.

“You’ll do fine,” Mohammad said, squeezing her shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll remember you. That was quite a first impression.”

The door slid open and Alice walked inside, finding Hazel lying on the center table. The mechanical appendages dangled motionless above her, reminding Alice of pictures she’d seen of thick, African vines. Mohammad led her to a chair near the foot of Hazel’s table, where, once awake, Alice would be the first thing she would see.

But upon Mohammad’s exit, Alice moved closer to the wall, where Hazel would have to turn her head to find her. Alice didn’t want Hazel to be startled by her. She would already be waking up in a strange and unfamiliar place.

Soon the girl began to stir and Alice watched her eyes slowly open. That was when the appendages decided to move, slithering up and out of sight. Hazel watched as they did so and then turned her head to survey the room. She discovered Alice sitting there in only a moment.

“How do you feel?” Alice asked, mimicking Mohammad’s first question to me, but Hazel didn’t answer.

Her eyes narrowed at the sight of Alice.

“How do you feel?” Alice repeated, slower this time.

“Am I dead?” she asked.

Alice shook her head. “No.”

“I saw you,” Hazel whispered softly. “You were there.”

Alice nodded. “We came for you.”

Hazel scrunched her face and looked around the room for a moment. “I don’t know where I am,” she said. “Where did you take me?” Her voice began to tremble.

“You’re okay, Hazel,” Alice assured her, getting to her feet and crossing the room. “You’re safe here. No one can hurt you anymore.” Instinctively, Alice had begun to run her hand through Hazel’s blonde hair, discovering a labyrinth of knots within.

“My dad told me about you,” Hazel recalled. “But he said you all died.”

“Not me.” Alice shook her head. “Someone saved me.” Hazel looked up into Alice’s green eyes as Alice smiled down at her. “And now
I
saved
you.”

She watched a tear emerge from the corner of Hazel’s eye, just before it rolled down her cheek. That tear was followed by many others. Hazel turned, reaching out, to bury her face deep into Alice’s chest, sobbing silently as she continued to stroke her hair; it must have been the only way Hazel knew how to cry—Alice thought—so no one would hear her.

“It’s okay,” Alice reassured her, more times than she cared to count. “You’re safe now, Hazel. No one can ever hurt you again.”

Nothing more had to be said at the moment; Hazel didn’t have to know everything just yet. The fate of the world would just have to wait until this girl was good and ready. Alice’s next objective would most certainly involve getting Hazel a warm shower and a decent meal.

That went without saying, for the shoulders of this young lady were nowhere near ready to carry such a heavy burden.