AfterLife (12 page)

“How did you change her perception?” Emily turned and leaned
up against the wall to face Wes who was still looking over the side at the
remnants of the bottle.

“Simple. I used a mirror and controlled her image in it to
show her how I saw her.”

“And that worked for her?”

“Well, I don’t know for sure, but I think it did. After she
looked in the mirror, her mental image of herself changed to reflect what was
in the mirror.”

Emily’s face was lit by the light from the setting sun she
was now facing. Wes turned and leaned against the wall next to her. The view of
the sunset was less obstructed than the lake. Now a large, deep red orb, the
sun was just beginning to fall below the horizon.

“Wes,” Emily said, “if you really did connect with this girl
and help her change the way she saw herself, then you have succeeded in
repaying an antemort for the life she has given you in a way that I could only
dream of doing myself. What a powerful thing to be able to do. I’ve never known
any other Mortui who was able to freely go between minds without being synced.”

 “I don’t know how I did it though,” Wes said, quickly
trying to slow the growing excitement Emily showed. “It’s also possible that it
never happened.”

“I think it must have. You’re here aren’t you? We’ll have to
ask the Ancestors if they’ve ever heard of anything like this. Have you
connected with anyone else without syncing?”

“No,” Wes answered.

“That’s probably a good thing. Also, maybe you should try to
keep from doing too much of it before we figure out how it works. You don’t
want to go strolling into the wrong person’s mind or accidently allow them into
yours.” Emily gave Wes a smile.

“I guess not.”

Emily’s last comment made Wes see the power this ability
would give a Mortui. Being able to connect with someone without having to sync
was like having telepathic powers. What about accidently allowing someone into
his mind? If he were able to freely move into others’ minds, could they come
freely into his? Apparently it wasn’t common for Mortuis to do what he’d done
tonight, but he was still too new to know any of this for sure.

“Now Wes, I have to leave you.” Emily pushed away from the
wall and brushed away the sand that was still clinging to her clothes from her
beach. “You should go work on that park of yours and stop sneaking up on me at
my beach.” She reached her hand out to Wes. “You’re good company so don’t think
I’m trying to get rid of you. Still, everyone needs some time to themselves. I
know you understand.”

“I do.” Wes brushed the remaining sand off his clothes and
then chuckled when he realized that such an act was pointless. The sand didn’t
exist outside of their minds. “I really am sorry for intruding.”

“I know you are. Good guys always care about how their
actions impact others.” The rooftop faded around them as Emily broke her
meditation and disappeared along with the rooftop he had replaced her world
with.

Wes found himself in the nothingness again. He wondered how
long it would be before Emily discovered he wasn’t the good guy she kept
calling him. When he was alive, he never paid much attention to how his actions
impacted others. He might not have intentionally hurt someone or made them
believe he was a bad person, but he never went out of his way to be a positive
influence in anyone’s life either. Nor could he forget how he neglected his
family. His suicide had caused his brother Lyall pain; he saw that the day he
was carried out of his apartment. Maybe Lyall was still grieving.

Knowing he should do as he was told and not try to connect
with anyone else, Wes couldn’t help wondering if he could connect with his
brother. It might be a way to see him and comfort him without having to let him
know he was alive. To Lyall it would only seem like a dream and it might allow
both of them some closure. If not closure, then maybe comfort. It was worth a
try.

Wes imagined his brother just as he’d imagined the girl from
the bar and Emily, but his brother never appeared. He tried a few more times,
before finally giving up. What was different? Why was he able to connect so
easily with them and not his brother? More importantly, if Emily didn’t know
anyone else who could do it, who would he even ask?

Finally admitting defeat, Wes took Emily’s advice and
decided to work on his version of the Magic Kingdom. If nothing else, it would
occupy his thoughts and take his mind off other things. From the nothingness,
he created the themed lands that made up the world that would be his escape,
and his memories began filling in the gaps. This world was much easier to take
on than the world of his new Mortui reality.

S
eth stared out
the window into the street. It was a quiet night, and the fog rolling in off
the lake filled the streets. There was something poetic about the scene and
what he knew they would accomplish that night. After years of studying the
possession of antemorts from a scientific perspective, Seth was certain tonight
would be the night they would finally find the answer and the waiting would
end. It was only a small piece of a much larger plan, but an integral one.

The Atumra of Chicago operated out of a fairly large
restored brick and stone office building just north of the city’s center. They
also owned and operated most of the businesses located at the street level of
their building including an organic bakery, a pub, an antique store, and their
newest addition, a specialty cupcake shop. Hundreds of customers visited these
businesses, most of them young, allowing the shop to serve as a buffet for the
Atumra living and working in the building. It was too easy a trap for Seth and
he was never one to graze. He preferred to finish off his meals, and although
he did occasionally follow one or two of the customers back to their homes for
feeding, he usually favored pursuing his game elsewhere.

Aside from the retail businesses at street level, the rest
of the building and indeed a large portion of his Atumra group were more
recently dedicated to the research of body possession. Transferring the soul of
a Mortui to an antemort’s body was no easy task. There were stories of natural
occurrences of the process taking place throughout history, but most of these
incidences were described as chance happenings. It was the goal of the Body to
eliminate any uncertainty in the process so they could conduct possessions at
will. Through their research they had discovered that in order for possession
to take place, a number of different factors had to come into play.

Mortuis had known from the beginning of time – or more
correctly, the beginning of death and second life – that a living being was
made up of several components: the body – simply a shell for everything else,
the mind or soul – the part that was uniquely the individual, and energy or
life force – the part that kept the other parts united. When the body was badly
damaged, it usually resulted in a loss of life energy and the soul would leave
the body resulting in the death of the individual. Alternately, the loss of
life energy would also cause the soul to leave the body whether it was damaged
or not. This type of loss of life occurred when a Mortui consumed the entire
life energy of an antemort.

For a Mortui to possess the body of an antemort the
conditions needed to be exactly precise. First of all, not every antemort body
will accept a soul other than the one that originally inhabited it. There was a
biological component to be considered. Recent research had discovered there was
a genetic marker that had to be dominant in order for an antemort to become a
Mortui; if the marker was present but recessive, the individual would simply
die. The spirit could not remain in the body. However, those with a recessive
marker were perfect for possession, and these were the individuals a Mortui
spirit could enter provided all other conditions were met.

With each failure they were slowly determining what those
conditions were. It seemed that it was a requirement that the antemort be
unhappy enough with life that he would easily let go of his body. So-called
“fighting spirits” proved impossible to possess. Also, death needed to come by
natural causes and couldn’t originate from feeding, and the transfer had to
occur at the exact moment the antemort’s spirit left the body. That was the
tricky part. Once the spirit left the body so did the life force, unless, under
just the right circumstance, some spirit was present. This knowledge had led to
their current findings.

At the most recent attempt it was discovered that the gender
of the individual to be possessed and the Mortui who was to possess it had to
be the same. For whatever reason, a body would not accept the spirit of a
Mortui of the opposite sex, probably because it indicated that the original
spirit was gone.

Even after having discovered all this, the main reason the
Atumra still didn’t have any successful possessions under their belts was the
inability to create the perfect killing serum. The drug they were developing
was supposed to bring the antemort’s body close enough to death so the person’s
soul would sever its connection without damaging the body.

Once they achieved the perfect chemical composition for the
serum and all other conditions were ideal, Seth trusted the possession process
would be fairly simple and easily replicated. It was believed that a Mortui
simply had to soul-sync with a dying antemort just as the antemort’s spirit was
leaving the body, thus causing the Mortui’s spirit to be pulled in to replace
the original spirit.

For many years now Seth and the Body, the council that
governed the Atumra, had poured a great deal of their resources into developing
a successful possession program. It was an integral part of their plan to
recruit Mortuis that belonged to different sects, including the members of the
organization called AfterLife. Seth believed Mortuis were superior beings, and
it surprised him that large numbers of them yearned for mortality and were
willing to give up eternal life for it. They wanted to once again experience
the sensations that came with the senses of a living body – taste, touch,
sexual gratification. Death made these things only memories. This group of
Mortuis who sought a second chance at life would be the ones the Atumra would
target. By possessing a mortal body they would grow old and die. Well, Seth
thought, if they lasted that long. They didn’t deserve the gift they’d been
given.

Mortuis were gods among the antemorts. They could live
almost indefinitely as long as they were able to feed. Their bodies weren’t
susceptible to the limits or frailties that came from a living body. Antemorts
were merely a source of energy and repair.

Mortuis that didn’t understand this didn’t deserve to be
Mortuis; at least that was Seth’s and the Body’s view. The plan was to recruit
discontented Mortuis by promising the opportunity to occupy a living body once
they’d proven themselves to the Atumra. What these new members wouldn’t realize
was that once they possessed a living body they were easy to dispose of. Seth
thought about all the kids being lured to Pleasure Island in the story of
Pinocchio. Once the fun was over it was time to pay. Rahul would be the first
to pay for his desire to live again.

Ultimately, the Body followed two long-term plans. The
first, using procedures already in place, was the building of an army of
Mortuis. For the past few years, branches of the Atumra were locating the best
candidates to be part of this army. This long process began with pinpointing
the gene that facilitated the ability for the soul to remain in a human body
after death. Once they had identified the marker within human DNA, Atumra
members began infiltrating hospitals and blood banks to get access to samples
of blood for testing. It was from these tests that candidates for both the army
and the possession process were being identified.

An army would be more difficult to build and the selection
process for participants was much stricter by Atumra’s guidelines to prevent
the recruitment of weak individuals. Weakness would come from the selection of
inferior recruits. When a person became a Mortui, he or she was limited by the
physical condition of the body at the time of death. Mortuis cannot build
muscle or mental capacity beyond the capabilities of the body during its
sojourn in life. They had learned that an individual whose body was born with
mental or physical handicaps would continue to exhibit those handicaps even if
they became a Mortui. A person with a capacity to learn would continue to learn
– one with mental limitations would continue to have the same limitations.
Physical limitations after death were even stricter. If the individual had
taken care of his or her body and developed strength and agility while alive,
the body could remain in that condition. Physical limitations present in life
could not be corrected after death. A Mortui body was merely a machine that
could be restored to its original condition at the time of death but not
improved. With the absence of the biological processes that take place in a
living body, a Mortui was unable to create or improve any body parts. Seth
likened it to the ability some animals have to regrow limbs while humans
cannot. A Mortui was as different from an antemort as an antemort was from a
reptile.

With the first part of the Body’s plan focusing on the
building of an army by turning the very best genetically inclined antemorts
into Mortuis, the second part was the perfecting of the possession process. Not
only would it be an incentive for recruits from other Mortui organizations to
join the Atumra, it could also be used to gain power within existing
governments. While dominant markers were relatively rare, recessive markers
were much more common. Possession of important persons in society would be one
of the quickest ways to gain power.