Apocalypse: The Savior with System

8 Amoral Sachly

In a glass conservatory behind a Greco-Roman styled manor in Dallas, a lone middle-aged woman bent low over a rare species of a rosebush, her gloved hands carefully selecting some choice stems while her gardening shears cut off the centimeter-long thorns. Echoing around her in the humid space was the sound of soprano Maria Callas easily performing her lines from Scene 3 of Act One from Mozart’s The Magic Flute opera.

She liked listening to opera. At one time in her life she had dreamed of performing on stage, going against her parents’ wishes to study music and voice in Juilliard. But the pull of family, responsibility, and inheritance was too strong. Before graduating, she ultimately left the world of art and went into the business of science.

She never thought she had it in her to be so scientific and technical. Her time in the music world had all been about emotion and decadence. She never completely let go of the lifestyle, however. Her decade-long husband, Ulysses, ensured her independence in exchange for a merger with her father’s research institute and laboratories. Her knowledge and experience needed Ulysses’ business savvy and political connections to grow.  

Since then, Moira Sachly-Pearse has spent the last thirty years studying the disease. She was not so much interested in the cure as to know the hows and whys of the pathogen. And once she knew those, she wanted to know how to kill it.

In all the ways possible.

She turned at the sound of footsteps behind her and saw a red-haired woman in her twenties, dressed in a power suit and black heeled pumps, as she required of all of her staff.

“Good morning, Mrs. Pearse,” the woman intoned, stepping closer, a phone dangling in one hand, which did not escape Moira’s notice.

“Good morning, Sylvia,” she returned the greeting, laying down her basket of roses on a low wooden table.

“I received a call from the institute,” Sylvia said in a deadpan voice. “They have been attacked from the inside.”

Moira nodded calmly. “As expected.” She turned slightly away to remove her gardening gloves. “The specimens?”

“All gone.”

“The staff?”

“None remained alive.”

Moira emitted a sound that was not quite unlike a petulant whimper. “One cannot truly call it a waste, right? Some things have to be disposed of, like problematic RNA sequences that need to stop codons to, well, stop before they cause trouble.” She began sorting the roses in the basket, glancing at Sylvia's askance. “And what of our good Doctor Merkel?”

Sylvia shook her head. “Highly likely among the casualties of the attack, ma’am.”

“Now, that was a waste,” Moira quipped, using the gardening shears to shorten the rose stems to her desired length and leaving a few thorns attached yet hidden under the blooms’ sepals. “” Lovely girl, just like a daughter to me. But she had ideas, one too many for the good of the company. It cannot be tolerated.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

Moira sniffed. “Well, that’s all done now. Make sure the trail is clean…or as clean as you can make it. Ulysses can deal with the aftermath. You may go back to your duties.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Moira waited if the girl would dip into a curtsy and was preparing to laugh if she ever did.

Sylvia did not curtsy. A disappointment.

As Sylvia was exiting, her husband entered the conservatory, ignoring Sylvia as he made his way further in. Moira raised her face so he could kiss one cheek.

“Fancy meeting you here, Ulysses,” she said in a teasing tone. “Checking out my secretary? Or, pretending not to?”

Her placid husband simply raised an eyebrow. “Good morning to you, too, Moira.”

Moira burst out laughing the dainty, upper-class laugh she had perfected since childhood. “Oh, darling! It’s nothing, really! I f****d her last week but I can’t say for certain if she was better than the last one—what’s her name?”

“Sandra.”

“Yes! That one! Sandra and Sylvia, gosh! I always mix up their names!” Moira smirked at her husband. “I still haven’t forgiven you for taking Sandra. She was always a good f**k. She doesn’t look that much happy in your staff, though.”

Ulysses hummed a response and sat on a wicker chair by the table. He looked faintly tired but one can never truly tell with him who’s always so put together. But Moira knew there was only one person in the world that could annoy her husband enough to seek out her company in private, which he had rarely done in their entire ten-year marriage.

Only twice to be exact. The first was to offer her marriage. The second was to f**k her once on their honeymoon, like those Medieval post-wedding rituals just to prove to the world they were truly married.

“Morgan,” she stated, returning to her roses.

“Morgan,” he repeated. “His spies have found out about the Ormara Experiment and the prototype for Project Hephaestus. The bugger’s quite resourceful, I give him that. But he’s no closer to the truth.”

“Of course he isn’t,” Moira said, wrapping her hands around his neck. “She felt the tension in his muscles. Her husband was more stressed than she initially thought.  And when her husband was stressed, he made bad decisions.

Really, annoyingly bad ones.

So she tightened her fingers around his neck and began massaging. She could feel the pounding of blood in his carotid arteries and wondered absentmindedly if he would fight her should she tighten her fingers more. She knew he liked that sort of thing though so he might get too much enjoyment.

Not here in her conservatory, no.

“I tell you what,” she began, loosening her grip around his neck. “How about you go after my lovely Sylvia for the day, hm? And maybe, I think I can squeeze in a little bit of time to drop by with Giorgio. Then perhaps we can talk about Morgan, the institute—“

Ulysses turned around to peer at his wife. “Primus Lucas Giorgio?”

Moira grinned. “He likes opera…and my flowers.”

Ulysses chuckled, leaned further back, and kissed his wife full on the mouth this time. Grinning himself, he rose from the chair and left the conservatory, leaving Moira to turn her attention back to the flowers, her favorite blood-red china hybrid tea roses.

Behind her, in an ascending series of notes that made the Queen of the Night aria a terror to perform and behold, Maria Callas proceeded to threaten to disown her daughter if she did not murder the actually benevolent Sarastro.

In the midst of the climax, Moira smiled, singing softly along with the soprano’s rage:

“Hört, Rachegötter, Hört der Mutter Schwur!”

Hear, gods of revenge, Hear the Mother’s Oath!

A hidden thorn pricked her finger, making her bleed onto an already blood-red rose petal. The orchestra rose to a crescendo and finally stopped.

Perfect.