Silverback

Michaels

Five men, all dressed identically in expensive-looking black suits were staring in her direction as she breached the doorway at the bottom on the stairs and stepped onto the marble flooring of the elaborate kitchen. Even though their clothing was uniform, the men varied greatly in other ways.  Each man represented a distinct and different ethnicity. 

The man who recently intruded on her in the bathroom upstairs had silver and black hair with blue eyes.  He appeared Caucasian despite his golden tan.  He was at least six foot four and strongly built.  If circumstances were different, Sarah would definitely have been flirting with him.  Now, however, all she wanted to do was to become invisible.

To his right was a man of similar height with thick, jet-black locks cut in a stylish pompadour.  His large black-brown eyes were surrounded by the kind of lashes that women spent high dollars to artificially achieve.  The cut of his suit revealed how fit he was underneath.  She felt that he must be of Mediterranean decent.  

As she looked from one man to the next, they continued to observe her silently.

The third man sat with his right arm draped casually over the back of a kitchen chair.  His long legs crossed at the ankle beneath the table.  His black hair was cut short exposing a widow’s peak.  Paired with his hazel eyes and perfectly manicured beard, he could successfully sell tequila to a cloister.

The next, with a close-cut afro and darker eyes was taller and a bit thinner than the rest of the group.  His lean, athletic frame made him look like he could step onto the field with any professional baseball team.

The last man in the room was blond. His hair was long and thick, the top half pulled back like Orlando Bloom’s character, Legolas, from the Lord of the Rings movie series.  His skin was light and his eyes were an odd shade of green. She had never seen anyone who looked like him except in fantasy films.

Sarah’s nervousness started to grow as they all gazed at her in uneasy silence.

“What is this? A Secret Service to the United Nations?” she finally blurted out failing to remain calm.

 The five men just looked on.

 “Where is Michael?  Did he leave me here?  He couldn’t have just left me here.”

“Sarah, I told you that he had to be eradicated.” The Caucasian repeated what he told her when they were upstairs.

“What do you mean by eradicated? Please explain yourself.” Sarah raised her voice slightly feeling agitated by the term.

The blonde leaned forward and rested his elbows on the kitchen island.  He clapped his hands together lightly and spoke. “He had to be killed.  His behavior was posing a risk to our kind. For instance, his obsession with you caused him to act rashly.  The Michaels that you know better as ‘Drew’ and ‘Devlin’ determined your worth long before Michael met you in that bar.  That was not a chance happening.  He couldn’t control his feelings for you and lashed out at one of our own. So, now here we are.  What do you suggest that we do with you?”

Sarah's eyebrows knit in confusion, but she didn't answer.

“She’s caused us a multitude of problems, but I think we owe it to ‘Drew’ and especially to ‘Devlin’ to map her genome.” The Mediterranean-looking man offered.

“All in agreeance?” asked the Caucasian.

“Agreed.” The group answered in unison.

The Tequila model swung his arm from where it was draped across the back of the chair and pushed himself up from the massive dark-wood table.  With long strides he approached Sarah and stopped directly in front of her.  She tilted her head back and noted the casual expression on his face.

“We will need a sample from you.” He stated looking down at her.

He pivoted on his right leg and turned to face the group.  “Cells from her mucosa will be sufficient for genome mapping, but I would like to draw a few tubes of blood as well to see what she’s been exposed to.  I also think we would be remiss if we didn’t do a thorough physical examination.”

Sarah struggled to maintain her steady breathing as she started inching backwards towards the stairwell.

The human version of Legolas nodded his head in her direction and smirked anticipating that she was about to make a run for it.  “I believe it will be easier on us to sedate her.”

Before he finished the last word of his sentence, Sarah turned and darted. The strong grip of Tequila’s hand on her arm stopped her before she made it to the first step.  He spun her around and started marching her through the kitchen past the Caucasian, Black and Greek Michaels.  Legolas rose from his elbows and moved to the thick, carved door that led back to the entryway. Leaning his weight into it, he shouldered it open and held it for them.  “I’ll be down to help you in a moment.  I’m going to call the lab.  We will want Devlin to transport these samples back there as soon as they are harvested.”

“Absolutely.” Agreed Tequila as he guided Sarah through the expanse where her Michael had first introduced her to the beautiful, but strange residence.  They strode through it without pause towards the unfamiliar wing of the converted hotel.

She turned her head to glance at the front door. “Don’t even think about it.” Tequila said acknowledging her thoughts.

They stopped short of the doorway that led to the opposite wing.  It was done in a 180 degree contrasting style to the elaborately carved door that Michael demonstrated as describing the history of the Lourdi just a few hours ago.  Now he was dead.

The door where she now stood was made of a thick, frosted glass with an intricate pattern etched in that reminded her of the handmade German lace curtains hanging in her apartment.  The reminder caused tears to burn in her eyes. 

“Is there a way for you to get Thalia for me?”

“Your dog is being well taken care of.  The bullet didn’t cause her any real damage.” He stated without actually answering her question.

His reassurance made her feel slightly more relaxed despite what she feared was getting ready to happen to her own flesh. “I-I don’t want to be sedated.” She blurted out.

“You don’t have a choice. We have already decided that you must be.”

“Can you wait until Devlin arrives before you do?”

“Why?”

“I want to talk to him…Please.” She said softly looking down at his shoes as they continued through the glass door and started down a long hallway that had the aseptic feel of a modern surgical center.

“We can’t really waste that kind of time.”

“What is the hurry?”

“The age of Lourdi is close.  In order for us to determine if you are genetically pure enough to save we must process your samples as quickly as possible.”

Tequila gently pulled on Sarah’s arm stopping her at a door midway down the hall.  Placing his finger on the biometric lock caused a series of tones followed by the disappearance of the door as it slid back into the wall. The room beyond was like the bedroom suite upstairs in size, but was completely different in décor.  There were seven stainless steel laboratory benches evenly spaced down the middle of the room.  On each one rested the types of lab instruments that Sarah used daily at INVICTA. Beyond each was a surgical table.  Sarah involuntarily began to tremble at the sight of them.

“Wh-why are there surgical tables in this room?” she asked as her body noticed the significant drop in temperature from the hallway to this room.

“When we find someone who we want to save, we alter them back to their perfect state.  During the age of Lourdi, there can be no imperfect beings.”

Sarah’s curiosity trumped her trepidation. “Alter them how… exactly?”

“We have to add back the DNA that has been lost from their telomeres and other loci from generations of exposure to things unclean.”

“Things unclean?”

“Pollutants resulting from the greed of so-called progressive man.”

“I see.” Sarah responded understanding the concept. “I knew that loss of telomeres corresponded with aging.  You are now telling me that when we go from one generation to the next that each generation receives a lesser DNA code as well?”

Tequila raised his eyebrows as he looked down at her.  “You might be worth saving afterall."

Sitting empty at the rear of the room was a black patent leather chair.  The style of it reminded Sarah of the type she was periodically tortured in by her dentist.  Tequila put his hand on the small of her back and urged her towards it.

“The last time I sat in a chair like that, I almost choked on my own blood.  My dentist’s assistant couldn’t keep her eyes off of her cell phone long enough to run the suction.” Sarah explained hoping the tall man with thick black hair would respond with a more comforting story about the chair she was about to occupy.

“Those people will be eliminated.” He said without emotion.

Sarah stopped and turned to look at his face.  His expression was as calm as if he were talking about what he’d just had for dinner instead of the mass eradication of imperfect humans.

“They are not of your concern.” He said as he motioned with his right palm for her to continue to the chair.

A dozen or so two-by-three-inch silver rectangular features came into view as they closed in on it.  The metal objects were a series of buckles evenly spaced along the length of the chair.  Each was hanging from the end of leather strap. Their placement on the chair gave away their function.  It was obvious that anyone who allowed themselves to be strapped in was not supposed to move.

Sarah stopped a few feet short of the chair and pivoted back to Tequila again just in time to see Legalos and Devlin entering the room

“Dev!” Sarah exclaimed, relieved to see a familiar face.  Her excitement died immediately as he looked past her and greeted Tequila.

“I suppose since you have her down here that the counsel determined that we were right about this specimen’s potential to be reincarnated?” Devlin stated nodding towards Sarah.

Her mouth dropped open in disbelieve at this version of Devlin.  “Specimen?”

Dev and Legolas were next to the chair in a few strides of their long legs. Ignoring her, Legolas answered Devlin’s inquiry.  “We believe you are correct.  Let’s get her strapped in and find out, shall we?”

Tequila turned his eyes to her. “Will you please take a seat?  We could force you to sit, but it would be an unnecessary expenditure of your energy.  You will want it later.”

Sarah looked at the chair and at Devlin who already had a buckle in each of his hands.  His eyes were emotionless.  She stepped to the chair, twisted her body and slid into the seat.

“Devlin?” she repeated in a pleading tone. “Dev!” she said louder c*****g her head at him.

He turned his blue eyes to her. “Put your arms on the armrests, please.”

She crossed her arms defiantly and stared at him waiting for his reaction.

In her peripheral vision she could see, Legolas moving towards the opposite side of the chair, so she drew her legs to her chest and hugged herself tightly into a ball. Snapping her head in his direction; her eyes ablaze with fear and self-preservation. “I-I want some answers first. I NEED some answers.”

Legolas’s eyes narrowed and his mouth tightened slightly in a perplexed expression.  “Very well.  What more do you want… Nay, NEED, to know?”

“How are you going to determine who you are willing to save and who you are going to….murder?”

“Murder really isn’t a term that we like to use, Sarah.  We are simply going to allow their weakness to be their undoing.  It has already started.  The recent pandemic allowed us to use a myriad of electronic means to collect data on individuals.  Their reactions to it, such as their degree of compliance to irrational government demands, etcetera, gave us the clues we needed to identify those who were more and less flawed.  We have a placed all of the individuals in tech-enriched populations on either a "Save" or "Do Not Save" list through analyzing what they, themselves decided to broadcast.  It was fairly simple to do really."

“So, you manufactured and released that strain of Covid?”

“No, the time of Lourdi is near, but hasn't yet come.  Covid was manufactured and released by extremely flawed humans for their own nefarious reasons.  It just happened to benefit us in determining who was who.  As you can see, phenotypes, our physical characteristics have nothing to do the purity of our DNA."

Tequila stepped around Legolas with a rubber tourniquet and syringe/needle combination in his hands.  “Sarah, will you allow me to take your blood while Michael answers your questions?”

Still not used to the fact that their whole group went by the name, Michael, her mind went back to the man she knew as Michael, the man that brought her here.  “But”. She shook her head slightly restoring her clarity of the idiosyncrasy. “Yes, you may.” She agreed straightening her legs and placing her left arm on the arm rest, palm up, giving Tequila access to her antecubital veins. "I have a lot more questions."