The woman’s body went limp as Artemisia’s own vision cleared. She slowly loosened her hands around the woman’s throat, watching and listening, studying the woman’s pattern of breathing to ensure she was neither dead nor faking, just out.

  Satisfied, she pushed up to her knees and stood, shifting the focus of her ears to her surroundings as she kept her eyes on the woman. She heard no indications that others were around, none that didn’t regard the forest as home. The woman apparently had no backup; she’d likely felt she needed none. Against any other test subject, she might have been right.

  Artemisia would leave her where she lay. Others would come to retrieve her sooner or later. Let them find her alive. And let her spread the word that Artemisia was free now.

  She may have regarded Artemisia as a slave, but in truth the woman was a slave of man, a deviant follower of Adam, a betrayer of Eve, a defiant of Lilith. But killing her would serve no purpose. Nor would going after the doctor. The Most High son of Adam walked the Earth. A being who, like her, possessed divine abilities, potentially immense power. He was the one who’d die at Artemisia’s hands.

  She made a quick check of her person and attire. She had minor cuts and scratches, a dozen or so tender patches and abrasions, but she was able to walk; run, even. Her backpack was intact—but she’d need a change of clothes and more durable shoes. It wouldn’t hurt to splash some water on her face.

  Later, after she put more distance between herself and the clinic.

  In the meantime, she enjoyed the faint birdsong as she trotted through the forest, arousing another dormant sense. She didn’t need the sky to navigate. Like the winged ones, she also could—with some effort—see the Earth’s magnetic field.

  Shifting her sight now, her surroundings dissolved into a shimmer as she wondered about her limits, and how soon they’d be tested again.

  Four

  Using what preternatural talents she could access and control with a minimal amount of difficulty to remain relatively unnoticed, Artemisia steadily made her way through Virginia. Early in her journey, she traded her track suit for attire more suitable to hunting—durable, flexible, and lending itself to camouflage in the wild.

  Aided by a blanket acquired from a public laundromat and refashioned into a loose cloak, she adopted the guise of a mute vagrant, keeping mostly to parks and other wooded areas, places where she could easily blend in, places that offered her multiple advantages should the need arise to defend herself or disappear without a trace.

  The aftereffects of her fight with the woman lingered as faint strains of discordant music she occasionally heard in the back of her head; physically, however, her bruises and scars were minimal. If anything, she felt stronger. But she was mindful to keep overconfidence at bay.

  She slept with her eyelids relaxed, never shut. Wise to never let her body get too comfortable, she remained ready to spring up and into action when sensing threats, even though she took great care to doze in places where hardly anyone would think to look.

  During waking hours, even when in the distant company of others, she used a combination of light and studied facial expressions to make herself appear older, unbalanced, uglier, jinxed . . . A woman not worth acknowledging, let alone bothering. When some persisted in attempting to take advantage, she made quick work of them—unless it was easier to make herself invisible.

  When the dreary winter days gave temporary permission to a blue sky, she showered in sunlight. When feeling particularly bold, she chanced a bath in the cold waters of a stream or lake. More often, she frequented public libraries friendly to the homeless, making use of their restrooms to splash water on herself and of their computers to research wilderness survival tips and ways to manage the physical conditions she couldn’t fully control. Though she became increasingly adept at manipulating various forms of electromagnetic radiation, light overwhelmed her at times, taking hold of her body and mind, launching her into excruciating fits. The sheer power of her will, no matter how strong, wasn’t enough for her to remain self-possessed.

  Time and resilience allowed her plenty of studied practice with her abilities beyond the lab’s chamber. Invisibility, limited-range holograms, enhanced strength and agility, and other talents sourced from the seeds buried under her skin gave her the advantage when sneaking into pharmacies and health-care facilities after hours as well as other outlets to obtain food and wilderness supplies.

  It took some experimentation, but she eventually narrowed on the exact botanicals and approximate dosages that would help steady her and keep her in control of her own body; their effects lasted even longer once she fell into a regular routine of stretching exercises and meditation, digging deeper and deeper into herself to discover what as-yet-uncovered talents she might possess, and what secret knowledge her own mind might be keeping hidden from her.

  Her acquisition of survival supplies weighed her down, slowed her pace. She was strong enough to carry it all, limber enough to do so for long periods without incurring injuries, but she could only move so fast.

  Tramping across a glade on a late afternoon, she began to contemplate whether she should lighten her load when a tiny of bead of moisture hit the tip of her nose; another landed on her cheek. She lifted her chin and searched the sky’s blanket of clouds, wondering just how much snow would fall.

  It wouldn’t do to guess or gamble. She’d acquired a tarp for just such an occasion. Using it and the debris from the forest floor, she could construct a shelter.

  As she searched for a sufficient spot, she figured she’d best plan on settling in for the rest of the evening. The air’s temperature may not have been much of any hindrance to her, but she’d rather not test her skills at traveling with damp clothes or navigating during a potential snowstorm.

  In the hour it took to find an ideal spot and construct her shelter, the snowfall had increased its frequency; the flakes, their size. Sitting cross-legged on a blanket, she watched their gentle descents. As the day’s light faded, she altered her vision, focusing more on their crystalline structure as her breathing settled into a new rhythm.

  She fell into a spell of meditation. Her descent was not gentle.

  During other sessions, there were the inevitable eruptions of anxiety—bubbling fears that she had no idea what she was doing, that she was deranged, that her life was lie—but she’d tamped them down by recounting the origin and current state of humankind, its connection—and hers—to what was Real.

  This evening, a sense of dread fell on her, one miniscule piece at a time, settling on her skin and accumulating as snow blanketed the landscape beyond her. The dread was real, more real than the snowflakes. Lest anxiety take her, she’d have to escape, delve deeper, beyond her body, down to her essence, focusing on her purpose.

  She could shut out the world. After all, the observable universe was only part of the mere surface of Reality. She believed its design mirrored that of the archetypical human—a being that emerged as the process of Creation was well underway. A figure that was neither male nor female as modern humans would understand gender, it was a being of multiple genders, and none. An immense creature of many arts. If one could observe the universe as a whole, it would be like a transparent representation of the figure, a diagram of its internal systems. The archetypical human: the first universal being who—with intent—would spawn and assist the process of Creation.

  Early in her flight from the clinic and her exploitative aunt, Artemisia realized that, by concentrating on the stars above and allowing the wisdom of Lilith to infuse her intuition, she could draw her own personal constellation, a celestial map she could imprint on her consciousness, which in turn would lead and guide her toward the location of her chief enemy on Earth, the Most High son of Adam. The clinicians had been using a form of this technique while keeping her trapped in their skull-chamber. They hadn’t been looking for anyone on Earth but in the depths of Reality. They were wasting time. They were also messing with matters they didn’t truly understand.

  The onset of consciousness within this giant, this ancestor of humankind, was an awakening. As it became aware of what it was, its body experienced a storm, became simultaneously infused with a ruddy liquid and enveloped in bluish flames. The liquid and flames rapidly exchanged their properties back and forth, altering them with each pass.

  As the giant simultaneously experienced its own personal inferno and deluge, the universe evolved. The process of Creation continued around it, and within it.

  The process of consciousness manifesting was as tumultuous as any birth, and its effects rippled both outward and inward, disturbing the threads of Reality, entangling them, knotting them, weaving veils with them.

  The fiery liquid of self-consciousness gave humankind’s progenitor an awareness of self and not-self, an awareness of beginnings and endings. Creator, Creation, and creatures. Within itself, this giant became a divided being. Its awareness couldn’t help but be accompanied by confusion and stark fear about its changing surroundings, about its changing self, about its place in relation to everything else. Psychological arguments swirled into an internal war, which eventually led to an inner split, a mental expulsion, and a spiritual exodus.

  The subtracted portion, the one who escaped the embrace of a self-abuser . . . Artemisia came to characterize it as “Lilith”—another giant, a being wholly physical and wholly spiritual, who passed through the veils, escaping, becoming lost to the one it had left behind.

  The original one, despite having lost a significant part of itself, remained a giant, a being wholly physical and wholly spiritual. Still divided against itself—it eventually, again, divided itself.

  The subtracted portion did not flee this time. The internal conflict became an external one. The resultant giants . . . Artemisia characterized them as “Adam” and “Eve.”

  The droplets and sparks produced by their ferocious clash were the essence of human beings. Both Adam and Eve became Other to those born of them. Before modern humans could emerge, however, primeval humans set upon their parents, taking sides, an act of terror that continued on in various ways, not the least of which were the destructive ideas and habits humans held and carried throughout the ages as they emerged into modernity. Humankind—forever-killers of giants, perpetual practitioners of parricide.

  The overstimulation resulting from the archetypical humans’ birth and subsequent crises of consciousness sparked the Creator’s madness. The slaughter and fragmentation of Adam and Eve only inflamed the Creator’s insanity. Hence the current sick state of Creation.

  The doctor—God’s self-declared metaphysician—had his own plan for making right what went wrong. Artemisia had a better one.

  She came out of her meditation at sunrise, sitting in the same cross-legged position. Unfolding herself, she expected to find her muscles tight, her joints stiff. But it was nothing her usual stretching routine couldn’t work out. She was pleasantly surprised to find herself well rested, as if she’d slept in a real bed, on a good foam mattress. Time to pack up and move on.

  It had stopped snowing, and the clear sky showed no signs of further precipitation. Regarding the foot of snow on the ground, Artemisia briefly wondered if she should invest in snow boots before shaking off the notion. She wasn’t too far from her destination. Only a day or two away from yet another family reunion . . .

  She had a day or two to ensure the reunion came off without a hitch.

  She knew exactly how to resolve the too-long conflict of the first family—Adam, Lilith, and Eve. She understood them. The reconciliation of body, spirit, and mind would be painful, yet necessary. The meeting with her Aunt Antonia was necessary but, at any cost, should avoid pain—physical or psychological. At least at first.

  Artemisia hadn’t any particular affinity for her family-in-flesh-only. The promises of such a family—blood thicker than water—had revealed themselves to be nothing but barbed lies. Too many took the “blood” excuse as a special license to visit all manners of egregious abuse on their relatives. Still, members of her family-in-flesh-only had their uses, some of them significant, some of them key to her life’s mission.

  As she trudged through the snow, trying to make her way out of the whitened forest to drier ground, a sudden rush of crisscrossing currents in her head made her stumble. She kept her balance, kept moving forward, until a stronger bout of dizziness struck her. She had to pause this time, stretching out her arms to stay on her feet.

  It seemed her all-night mediation session had some negative aftereffects. She began to wonder if any of the medications she was carrying would help her get it under control when she felt an explosion of shrapnel within her skull, forcing her to her hands and knees with a scream.

  The pain in her head faded as the echoes of her voice did the same, but Artemisia was not quick to heave herself up to her feet. Rather, she faced the snow, panting, staring at the packed white crystals as they seemed to individuate, each crystal acquiring a different hue—greens, reds, blues—till they seemed to her as a mass of tiny gemstones.

  Her vision blurred to the colorful display as a caucus of interfering thoughts settled to coherency. Her meditation sessions had made it easier for her body to speak to her. It also gradually strengthened some once-subtle processes.

  Her dizzy spell was the result of her two internalized compasses interacting. The more dominant compass guiding her to the aunt she hoped would provide refuge had suffered interference from the strengthening subconscious flickers that acted to home in on her chief enemy.

  Gradually, she understood: In the same vicinity, there was not one but two relatives that could give her a measure of comfort. One could provide a safe house, a bundle of necessities that included food and shelter. The other could put an end to her suffering and the suffering of countless others—although, first, she’d have to succeed in putting him out of his misery.

  Her adversary, the one she had to kill, was bound to her by blood.

  She grinded her teeth at the realization, but it should not have been a surprise. It should have been clear to her earlier on that, if she was the Most High partisan of Lilith, then the Most High partisan of Adam would be a blood relative.

  She’d have to be careful in approaching him. Methodical. And she’d have to make damn sure no other parties got involved.

  Pushing to her feet, she took a deep breath of cold air and held it in her lungs as she shut her eyes. Both internal compasses were still working yet now compartmentalized. Her gemstone hallucination had been a sign of the processes getting back on track.

  She opened her eyes to watch the cloud of her exhaled breath, noting its hints of pink. This was surely a sign of something as well. Perhaps of her reinvigorated determination. Or maybe a portent of the force that, with a little concentration on her part, caused the snow directly before her to blow to either side, clearing a path for her that was uneven but preferable to clomping through snow.

  Moving solid objects within a tight radius of her body without touching them—a mild form of psychokinesis. It allowed her a faster pace than before.

  It was a will of iron that wouldn’t permit her accessories to slow her, nor would the unevenness on the ground, nor the biting gusts of wind carrying loose snow to blind—none would serve as impediments. She’d find a decent enough restroom to clean herself up, find some food, and then carry on, through the night if necessary.

  Five

  Late morning the next day, she entered Fairview, grimacing at the inappropriate name for the leafy neighborhood’s collection of million-dollar homes. Though she considered that maybe the enclave had obtained its name during winter, when the lack of leaves and other vegetation gave busybodies fairer views of everyone and everything.

  Treading the professionally paved sidewalks and deiced roads leading deeper in, Artemisia wondered if the skeletal trees, barren gardens, and oh-so-many silent eyes may have evoked a sense of dread in outsiders, particularly those trickling in from the adjacent city.

  No fear touched her. But she did maintain her cloak of invisibility. She wanted to observe without being observed, getting a feel for her aunt’s neighbors, who, despite the chilly weather, did not keep themselves tucked indoors.

  Whether in their yards or driveways or garages, or behind windows, no matter how occupied, Fairview’s inhabitants turned their heads and took long looks at passing cars, at the dog walkers and joggers, giving a hand wave if recognizing or furrowing their brow and narrowing their gaze if not. Though Artemisia remained unseen as she wound her way toward her aunt’s porch, she had no choice but to drop the cloak when pressing her index finger to the doorbell.

  The porch lay under a gabled portico, providing her extra shadows and cover, but the neighbors seemed to have an extra sense, alerting them to a foreign presence and pushing them to seek it out. She heard the passing cars behind her slow, their drivers undoubtedly squinting in her direction.

  Waiting for her aunt to answer the door, she looked over her shoulders and narrowed her own gaze, running her sight through a tight spectrum of visions to spy Fairview’s residents staring at her with shifting masks of concern, undoubtedly worried that some random black beggar had invaded their safe space. Each had to be wondering if she’d show up on their doorstep next, asking for food or trying to force her way inside their domiciles.

  She’d had the time and could have taken the care to appear more presentable, more appropriate to her surroundings. But she’d considered and waved the thought away, concluding it best to appear to her aunt as down on her luck. By the time she’d actually gotten here, it was about as true as it could be. No need to manipulate light to appear stained, bruised, and haggard—in obvious need.

  Though the inharmonic aftereffects of her fight from several days’ past still lingered in the back of her head—making her, at times, unsure of her balance—her procured herbs and elixirs had been useful in helping maintain control over her body.

 

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