The Ones Indited Part 1

"Jorge knows we've been in there," Lancaster points at the sealed by carpet door as the group walks down the dark hallway with an invisible Allery between them. Using the air, Noe supports Allery's body to keep him upright and walking.

Sarcasm gets the best of Feng Mian, "What's Jorge gonna do? Tell everyone that we trespassed into a prison he has set up in the Crystal Palace?"

Rosalind scoffs, "Better yet, cut off his connection to Patel Holdings? I'm the only living descendent. Without my signature, nothing big can happen to my family's company." 

The hallway ends. Their vibrant scarlet and green dresses storm about them as they break out into the bright glass chamber, passing by other guests and making a smooth beeline to the elevator.

"Hey, wait!" Jorge clambers over. 

"Yes?" Rosalind turns and raises an eyebrow at him.

Tripping over himself, Jorge stutters, "You- Yo-" face dampening with every syllable, "You should have a good evening!" His forced smile bites him like iced knives.

Lancaster nods his head and the group clicks their shoes into the elevator. The doors shut and as they travel downwards, Feng Mian pulls out a phone from her bossom, "We're on our way to you now with two additional units. All clear?"

On the other end, Vivian responds, "Affirmative. Standby for any changes."

"Roger that," Feng Mian cuts the call.

"I knew I shouldn't have let us watch G.I. Joe last night," Rosalind laments. 

Feng Mian retreats to the defense line, "You also wanted to see how they used to make movies back in the day. Now, all we have are ads and political skits."

The elevator doors open and they move out.

~

Swiftly, Vivian unlocks Daniel's door with the key Rosalind had left her when they departed on their field trip to Northville.

They left Daniel's home as four and are returning as six. Noe wonders if Daniel would be alright with strangers entering his apartment but concludes that, with Daniel's sympathy towards humans, he would not mind one bit.

"Come in," Vivian hoists Lancaster and Allery into the living room and settles them down on the couch.

"You must be hungry," Vivian worries after Noe filled her in on Allery's prior imprisonment situation. "Let me cook you up something warm."

"I can do it, ma'am," Lancaster gets up and lets Vivian take his seat. Vivian receives Lancaster's hint to assuage Allery and comforts Allery while Lancaster heats up some ingredients. 

A huge, open-mouthed yawn sounds from Rosalind's bedroom door. Jinn, eyes lidded, stretches out his ligaments. Remnants that he has had the nap of his life are crusted on around his eyes. When his vision straightens, Jinn rushes into the kitchen, "Lancaster?"

"Jinn? Is there a 'miracle' school reunion happening?" Lancaster questions. "First it was Noe now it's you. How are you here standing in front of me like the world is yours to claim when I left you lying on a hospital bed in Northville?"

"I asked you first," Jinn responds. "Is it really you, Lancaster?"

"In the flesh."

"Who's the reptilian looking guy on the couch?" Jinn whispers.

"Say that again?" Lancaster asks. "I didn't quite hear you loud enough to punch you in the face."

"Woah there," Jinn shuffles away, "I see you still enjoy threatening loyalty into people."

"Only in extreme cases. You would do the same."

"Nope."

"If you say so," Lancaster returns to his pot.

Soon, Lancaster sets a huge pot of vegetable soup on the counter. 

Soup again, Rosalind thinks but Feng Mian jumps forward to give Jinn a huge bowl of the stuff. 

After everyone has eaten and showered, Noe fishes out spare pairs of pajamas from all over Daniel's house to give to them. Throughout the night, Jinn snuggles between Rosalind and Feng Mian's bodies, Allery and Lancaster share Feng Mian's room, and Vivian sleeps in Daniel's quarters. Staring up at the ceiling in the living, Noe mentally weeps over that last fact.

Without Daniel close by, Noe finds it impossible to dig into some semblance of sleep. The hours tick away until midnight's silence rouses Noe's curiosity. Getting up, Noe slides back into his Ephrene robes and steals into the damp night air.

~

WESTVILLE RESIDENCE

A huge stone slab informs all passersby of the presidential suites located beyond the green grass and high stone walls. Noe easily slinks past the guards, leaps over the bricks black in the ink of darkness, and scans the mansion at the end of a driveway of polished houses; Prime Minister Kamiyama's dwelling place.

Standing in the middle of the driveway, Noe closes his eyes and stretches his vision outwards. He feels the oxygen reaching around the mansion's huge double doors, sweeping beneath the long genuine fur carpet of the entrance hall, and rushing into Prime Minister Kamiyama's yawning mouth.

Kamiyama's satin robes caress the air around her. Judging by how slowly most of the oxygen is moving, they lack energy; the lights must be off except in one room, the bedroom she is walking into. She switches off the bulb in there too.

Noe's feet lift off the paving. There is an unlocked window on the top floor of the mansion which leads into an attic. With staff roaming every hidden inch of the house, Kamiyama must have closed off access to the attic or the window would have been as tightly winded as every other.

He lands on the ledge of the window, the toes of his padded Ephrene boots clinging to the window's painted wood. Crouching, Noe slides the window open using the oxygen in the window's hinges before swooshing through.

The light in WESTVILLE RESIDENCE's courtyard does not touch a single strand of the attic's darkness. No matter how Noe concentrates, he cannot see a thing, that is, until he remembers his ability. Prodding his way through the attic's oxygen, there is nothing in the room. Not even an insect. 

The oxygen slips under an impenetrable crack. Walking over, Noe touches the wooden wall housing the crack. It hisses beneath his fingertips. There is openness behind it.

Wondering how to break through, Noe considers every option that does not produce a sound or leave behind evidence. Envisioning himself perspiring through the wall, Noe walks forward.

A strange decomposition sprinkles within Noe's body, as if his millions of minuscule gaps have formed between every piece of his make up. Appearing at the other end of the wall, the sensation of deatomization disappears and he finds himself in a room full of books; the first Earthly library Noe has ever been in, and possibly, the last library in the World. 

Scrolling through the indents on the scripts with the thick air of the room, Noe reads:

Platon. Marx. Beauvoir. Redi. Kahneman.

He cannot recognize any of the names and easily breezes past mounds of text.

A fresh pile of three manuscripts stacked in the corner ensnares his suspicion. Opening the top cover:

The Journal of Setiawan Choi.

Noe ponders, Choi... Choi... Kamiyama & Choi! Prime Minister Kamiyama founded her law firm with her husband. Setiawan Choi must be her husband's name. 

Noe hovers the stack of three books in the air and opens them at once. The subtle indents upon the first journal read:

"My wife now spends her days on her knees, howling to her pseudo religious figment of power. She claims that only the 'Chosen' get to live and sinners are doomed, born with impure bodies and minds. She wants to solve overpopulation by kicking out the impure people from the Dome. I'm trying to convince her not to but Allery is three years old and keeping my hands full. 'Visions from Heaven', she tells me, are what she sees in her dreams. There are crystal palaces, people in black, and a neverending day. I called a psychiatrist to run a secret evaluation of her mental state."

The second journal details:

"She decided to run for office against me. Her party consists of people just as fanatic as her, including her assistant, Jorge. I wonder what he does for her. We are now competing with each other. She is formulating a campaign thruster, a way for people to never die that she says will secure her spot the moment news of it hits the ground. However, research on significantly prolonging one's life was lost when the old world ended so she has hit a dead end. To joke about her failing project, I was the first to suggest the inditement of familial cells into the body mass of a critically unwell patient; an absolutely absurd scheme that no one would ever consider implementing. But, just like everything else, my wife stole the sinister idea from me. She found a surefire way of winning, by weaponizing the public's shared fear in the world of overpopulation and aging - death. The 'everlastings' she shall create one day she says, 'symbolize never ending life', as never ending as the day she saw in Heaven."

The final journal is marred by the handwriting of the same man. It gradually becomes messy scrawl frantically scratched across the paper, flying off the pages:

"I cannot idly watch while my wife destroys humanity. When I die, there will be intellectuals who see the link between my wife and me, the only real political opponent she has, and my death. There will be people who will publicize her wickedness. National outcry over her fraudulent 'elixir of life'. No one will sacrifice their own relative just to live a little longer, I beleiv. Her ultimate gaol is to brng back Babatnude Khumalo by giving up his last livng descendat. He is curentlu in Northblle but I think she is magink plans to bring him to Westville. Lancaster's his name? I can't quite remmber. Unlss my wife hideds the documents I have publciized and uses Jorge to permanently muffle threi outrage. there is no way she shall win for anthoer term. I looked into her reseatchWhat she doesn't know is that there is a rsik of the host's organs being rejected by the indited's cells. Allery is in the hospital now. Doctors say he's in criticical condition. I would do anythning to make him bettter afain. My only regret is not giving him enough of my time. She ptu semothing in my tea, m sure. I can hear her ftoosteps comng towards me. Her shoadow si in front of me, hands hlding aa sharp somthing in-"

A stain marks the end of the final entry, as disconcerting as the pools left behind when a truck rams into a human and cracks their skull against merciless tar. The undeniable tin stench reacts against the surfaces of Noe's buds: blood.