Untouchable

Not that such a thing mattered. The title of nun had been lost to her long ago when she had broken the first precept: do no harm. She’d broken that precept many times.

Sister Peter often tried to convince Lilith that what she did to end suffering or what she did by accident could not be considered a sin. But dead was still dead to those she touched. Maybe it wasn’t intentional, but it was a result of her actions. For that she knew she could never fully walk the path to true enlightenment. At least not in this lifetime.

There was, however, always the next.

“I am merely glad he lived,” Lilith insisted. “That neither one of us was responsible for killing him.”

Sister Peter smiled. “Amen.”

A noise penetrated their conversation, forcing Lilith’s head upward. She instantly identified the sound of machine rather than animal.

“Sounds like we are going to have more visitors.”

“Hmm. It’s been a while since she’s been here,” Sister Peter noted as she also studied the sky, waiting for the helicopter to catch up with the sound. “Several months. I thought maybe she was gone for good.”

Lilith took in the sister’s worrisome expression. “That sounds more like wishful thinking on your part. Do you not like our benefactress?”

Sister Peter folded her arms over her chest and frowned. “It seems petty, doesn’t it? After all, without her money we wouldn’t be able to afford the multiple-drug therapy that’s worked so well for those infected. Especially the children. But…”

“But?”

“There’s something about her, Lilith. Don’t you think it’s odd the way she seems to be so fascinated by you?”

Lilith shrugged. She hadn’t really considered it. It was clear to any newcomer that she was set apart from all the other groups. Not a nun or a monk or a villager. She imagined it was natural to be curious as to who she was, what role she served.

“I believe she thinks I am some kind of tribal healer. Of course, she does not understand how I make the medicine that I dispense.”

“Doesn’t she? The way she follows your every step when she’s here. The questions she’s always asking the sisters and the villagers about you. For a woman who is simply supposed to be doing good works with her money as she claims to be, her actions feel very…deliberate.”

“She never stays for long,” Lilith pointed out. “She will come and go and we will have that much more money as a result of her visit.”

Together Lilith and Sister Peter headed back to the village. The incoming helicopter caused the uproar it normally did. The children, desperate for distraction from their monotonous days, ran to the clearing that had been carved out for supply drops.

Supplies and Jacquelyn Webb’s helicopter.

A woman with apparently unlimited resources, Jackie owned the helicopter that flew her from Bomdila, the nearest city, into the heart of the jungle. A self-proclaimed philanthropist, she heard about the leper colony during a plea from the Franciscan nuns at her local church. Urged to act, she set up funds that allowed for a continual flow of the necessary medicines to treat leprosy in the tiny village. One day she decided that sending money wasn’t enough. She needed to come and meet the people infected with the horrible disease in order to determine how else she could help.

That was the story she told Lilith on her first visit. At the time Lilith saw no reason to question the older woman’s sincerity. However, now that Sister Peter had brought it to her attention she had to admit that Jackie very rarely showed any interest in the sick or even in the progress her money had made possible.

Instead her interest was in Lilith. How she’d come to be here. Why she’d chosen to stay. How she prepared the medicine that so many of those infected said took away the pain.

It was impossible to keep Lilith’s condition from those she lived with; too many precautions were needed. Although the sisters had often tried to convince her to find medical treatment for what they called her disease, they never pressed the issue or discussed it with outsiders.

Despite her financial contributions, Jackie was an outsider.

When Jackie asked about her strange garb, Lilith played it off as a uniform chosen by some women practicing Buddhism. When Jackie offered to take her out of the village, to see some of the other sights of India, Lilith simply declined without explanation.

By the time they reached the landing site the children were crowded together to watch the show. As the helicopter began its descent into the thick foliage that threatened daily to overtake the man-made landing pod, they waved and danced about. Blades rotated so quickly it was nearly impossible to see them.

The helicopter’s wheels touched down and Lilith saw that the pilot was the only passenger. Jackie hadn’t come, but her helicopter had.

The pilot emerged from the machine. On his shoulder he carried a satchel, and after maneuvering his way through the children who were all pleading for rides, he spotted Lilith. He paused for a second to study her.

Finally he walked directly to her. “You’re Lilith?”

Lilith took a step back. She didn’t recognize his accent, but he wasn’t Indian.

“I am.”

“This is yours.” He slipped the satchel’s strap off his shoulder and lowered it carefully to the dirt in front of her feet. Then he stepped away and once again threaded his way through the clamoring children. He got back in the chopper and almost instantly he was lifting off from the jungle floor.

“What was that about?” Sister Peter asked as she came up behind Lilith.

“I have no idea.” Kneeling, Lilith inspected the satchel. She flipped open a flap and pulled out another smaller black bag. Inside that she found a thin black square that she recognized. Jackie used to bring it with her every time she traveled. She said it was so she could stay connected to the outside world.

She showed it to Sister Peter.

“A laptop? She sent you her computer.”

Lilith shrugged and then reached into the satchel again. This time she pulled out a small box and an envelope. She opened the box and pulled back when she saw a fat gold spider sitting on black velvet. Shaped like a black widow, it was incredibly detailed. Small head, thin, wiry legs and a two-inch-long round bottom. Despite it being a replica, Lilith could almost feel its deadly aura. Her fingers trembled as she touched it.

“Not exactly my taste in jewelry,” Sister Peter noted. “Even if I hadn’t taken a vow of poverty.”

Lilith pulled it from the box and saw that the spider was attached to a gold chain. She looked at it quizzically.

“Do you think it was intended to be a gift?”

“Do you have a penchant for spiders?”

Lilith shuddered. “No. But it is heavy. If it is gold, it could be worth a great deal. Why would she send such a thing? I have no need of personal money or possessions. Only donations that can be used for the village. Do you think she wants me to sell it? I cannot imagine such a thing would be easy.” She didn’t want to verbalize it, but the necklace was very ugly.

“Read the letter.” Sister Peter pointed to the envelope in Lilith’s hand.

Having almost forgotten it, Lilith set the necklace back in its case and tore into the envelope. It was written in English, but Lilith had command of the written language as much as she did the spoken one.

The key is in the spider. Use it wisely.

Welcome to your new life.

Jackie (A)

“Welcome to your new life….” Sister Peter read over Lilith’s shoulder. “What does she mean by that?”

“I do not know. The key is in the spider….”

Lilith scooped up the box and stood. She pulled out the spider and studied it from all sides. Turning it on its back, she spotted a seam in the gold. Using her thumb, she pushed and pulled until the back slid open. Inside was a small silver rectangular device that Lilith didn’t recognize.

“I know what that is,” Sister Peter said. “It’s a memory stick.”

Lilith shook her head. “I do not know….”

“A flash drive. You insert this into the back of the computer in one of the USB ports. It stores files. Like a floppy disk or a CD only smaller and with more space. It means there is information on it. Information you can view if you plug it into the computer.”

“I do not understand. Why would she send me computer files? Here? And the letter A next to her name. I thought her last name was Webb. None of this makes any sense.”

“Then make sense of it. Read what’s on the files. You’ve probably got a few hours of battery life on this laptop. That should give you enough time to sort through whatever it is she wanted you to have.”

Lilith took the memory stick from Sister Peter and put it back into the spider’s belly.

“I was supposed to go to the monastery for study this afternoon,” she said absently. She had also thought that maybe today she would overcome whatever was holding her back and stop in to check on the visitor’s condition. She’d wanted to see for herself that he was doing well and that his leg was getting better.

And if she were honest with herself, she wanted to talk to him without him being delirious this time. Given his improving condition, it seemed likely he would be leaving soon. This could be her last chance.

“I have to go back up in a few hours to check on your friend’s bandages and to make sure he isn’t pushing himself too hard. I’ll let them know you’ve been detained.”

“I feel anxious, though. Reading what is on this computer. What if it is private? What if this is a mistake and Jackie simply sent this ahead of her arrival?”

“If it was a mistake she wouldn’t have written the note. And if it was that private she wouldn’t have sent it to you at all.”

“I know one thing for certain. I do not want a new life,” Lilith said adamantly, referring to Jackie’s message. “This is my life. I cannot imagine why she would write such a thing.”

Sister Peter shook her head and smiled sadly. “Oh, Lilith, this isn’t a life. This is an escape. Trust me, I know.”

“That is not true.” Lilith was stunned by the sister’s words. “I am needed here. I contribute. I belong here.”

“Of course you contribute. And yes, you are welcomed here. I didn’t mean to imply that you weren’t. Only that… Well, you didn’t get to choose this place. It was chosen for you. You didn’t get to decide what you wanted to do with your life. It was decided for you.”

“Not decided,” Lilith corrected her. “Dictated. Dictated by my condition. You have seen what I can do. I have no other choice.”

“Yes, I’ve seen what you can do,” she allowed. “But you don’t know if your condition can be treated. You have never tried to leave this place to find out. Accept the truth. You were sent here as a punishment by your family. A punishment you didn’t deserve because you couldn’t possibly help what happened.”

“I have never spoken of what happened,” Lilith said quietly. “You do not know what I did.”

“I know it must have been bad for your father to do what he did, but I also know you were a child. Barely thirteen when you were abandoned here. You stay in this place to punish yourself for this wrong you feel you’ve committed. That’s not living life. That’s suffering in purgatory.”

Lilith recognized the word from Sister Joseph’s many sermons. Purgatory was a place you went after death to atone for your sins before moving on to heaven.

Glancing around the village, she saw the small huts and so many of the thin, suffering bodies that filled them. There were good days here, but she couldn’t deny that most of them were filled with pain. Pain she could only ease for a little while.

Maybe Sister Peter was right. Maybe this was purgatory.

But that didn’t mean that Lilith didn’t belong here.

Chapter 3

The screen turned black as she continued to press her finger down on the power button. Lilith wasn’t sure if it was the proper way to stop the computer but it was the only thing she could think of to make the words go away. And she so desperately needed to make them go away.

If you’re reading this I’m dead….

The awful part was that Jackie being dead was the least disturbing piece of information in her files.

Genetic experiments. A new breed of powerful women. My offspring. My daughters.

Shaking her head, Lilith tried to remove the flashes of phrases that were burned behind her eyes, but they wouldn’t let go of her. She couldn’t unread what she’d read or unlearn what she’d learned. It would be with her now. Always.

Surrogate mother…two others created of my eggs…each of you now has a piece of my empire… Put the pieces together and all will be revealed… This is a taste…

Hungry yet?

Hungry? A taste?

Empire.

That word stood out among the rest. It was the word Jackie used to describe the endless amounts of folders on her memory stick. Some of the folders were names. Names that even in the far reaches of Arunachal Pradesh Lilith recognized. Leaders of the world, who had lied, cheated, raped and killed. Sinners, all of them, who paid money to hide their crimes rather than admit their mistakes and be punished for them. Vaguely Lilith wondered if they hadn’t simply created their own version of a lifelong purgatory.

And there was more. So many folders that she couldn’t open, but after what she’d already read she couldn’t imagine going any further. Couldn’t conceive of wanting to know more than she did.

Closing the lid on the laptop, she stood and moved away from it. Lilith knew she would never be able to move as far away from the machine as she needed to be to forget. She didn’t believe the world was that big.

Jackie Webb, Arachne as she’d referred to herself, was Lilith’s biological mother. That had been in the first folder Lilith read. The documents indicated that the woman in whose womb she’d grown had been nothing more than an incubator for a genetic experiment. Had she known when she agreed to do this what they were putting inside her? Did she have a choice?

Did she ever suspect that the baby she was giving life to would ultimately poison and kill its host?

The impact of what this meant, of what she’d learned, was suddenly too much to handle. It was like having the secrets of the universe revealed all at once. Her mortal mind was too fragile to take it in. She needed to leave. She needed to find someplace where she could let the information settle in her head and in her heart.

The monastery. There she could clean herself. In the garden she could let the water rush over her body, taking away the filth she’d been exposed to. She would remember who she was—not what the computer had revealed but who she had become since her birth.

Lilith started for the opening to the hut but stopped. The computer sat on her writing table, so out of place in the stark space she’d called home for these last ten years. She could still feel the heat it gave off. Or was what she was feeling something more sinister? Part of her wanted to destroy the computer and the tiny piece of metal inside it. But she knew she couldn’t. The information it contained was simply too important.

Walking back to it, she removed the stick from the back of the computer and found the spider necklace still nestled inside the box she’d place on her table. She turned it over and slid open the back, returning the flash drive to its hiding place. Leaving the necklace wasn’t an option, but the thought of wearing it made her shudder.

She had no choice.

Lilith pulled the gold chain around her neck and fastened the catch in the back. Then she tucked the gold body inside her silk coverall where it rested against her skin, safe from another’s touch.

Avoiding the greetings from the villagers and, more important, avoiding Sister Peter, who would have nothing but questions, she made her way up the steep hill to the monastery.

Another young monk answered the summons at the door. Pema had recently been sent to the monastery by his family in Nepal. If the beads of sweat that habitually formed on his shaved head were any indication, he still hadn’t gotten used to the weighted heat.

Lilith spoke in a dialect native to his land, one that she remembered from her childhood in Nepal, and he smiled. Thinking she had come for study, he pointed to where she knew Punab typically held his classes, but instead she made for the inner courtyard fashioned with water pumps and basins where the monks did their bathing as well as their laundry.

Winding her way through the series of walkways, Lilith found the center of the building. The burst of color inside the garden was so comforting she could have wept. This was the place she came from. The place where she’d begun to learn who she was. Not that other place. Not some lab.

Carefully she reached out and touched the delicate petals of the orchids that flourished under the brothers’ care. So much like her own skin, she thought. Soft and silklike with just a hint of dew. Sometimes others thought she glowed. It hadn’t been a curse as her father believed. It wasn’t a sickness like the nuns suggested.

What had been done to her had been done on purpose. By Jackie.

Frowning, Lilith let the flower fall from her hand and made her way deeper into the courtyard where she found a series of pumps. Taking a large clay bowl with a flat bottom that had been specifically designated for her use, she placed it under the pump and began to call up water from the well that resided under the brick building.

In deference to her sex, she sought out the three-sided partition that the brothers had constructed for her. It allowed her privacy during her bath as well as prevented the monks from being tempted by her femininity should they stumble upon her. Once behind it she felt free to unwrap the bindings that encased her.

Tarak winced. He felt the pinch in his thigh with every step he took and figured he was overdoing it, but he wouldn’t let himself stop. In a sick way, he was happy to feel the pain. It reminded him that he had a leg. His fault, he told himself. When he’d arrived at the monastery’s doorstep he hadn’t been paying attention to the nagging pain in his thigh. Only the one in his soul.

Eventually the fever had overtaken him to the point where he’d known he was in trouble. Spending more time in the jungle than most, he’d seen what fever unchecked by medicine could do to a man. A merciless thief, it could rob a man of his strength, then his sanity, until finally it took his life.

Lucky him, he’d been spared both his life and his sanity. Or had he?

Images still haunted him from that night when the monks had come to his room. It seemed otherworldly. Surely a sign that he’d lost his mind. There had been two women with Punab. A plain-faced one, simple and forthright. She’d wiped his brow and told him to hold on—that someone was coming to take away the pain. He’d felt the fire in his body. The heat was focused most intensely where the bullet had ripped through the flesh of his upper thigh.

He remembered lying in his sweat thinking that the heat was good. The pain was good. He deserved it. He’d earned it. Everyone else had died. But he had lived and for that he needed to suffer.

He wanted to tell the woman in the rumpled white habit that he craved the pain. Because not only was it punishment, it was proof. Proof that he was alive. That he’d been smarter than the enemy who had betrayed him. There was satisfaction in that even though his men were dead.

Where had it gone wrong?

Tarak stopped in his wanderings. He reached down to massage the muscles around the wound, working his fingers deep into his leg to ease the cramps. When he looked up, the colors of the garden exploded before his eyes and he realized he’d made it from his room to the center-court orchid garden.

He wanted to appreciate the beauty in front of him, but instead his mind kept working back to the question that had stayed with him every day since the incident.

How had he failed?

He could ignore the lingering questions. Accept what happened and move on. Tell himself that it was the job. The risk they all took. But he knew himself well enough to know he never would.

Instead he let himself think back to the specifics of the mission.

He took himself back to the compound outside of Monteria, Colombia. It wasn’t hard. The sweet scent of the orchids reminded him of another jungle on the other side of the ocean.

Back there it had been darker and the stench almost rancid. The rain hadn’t just fallen on their heads, it had cascaded. But they all knew the job, and rain wasn’t something they let get in the way. Six soldiers. All contracted by the CIA. Tarak had been chosen to lead.

Mistake number one, he thought grimly. He’d allowed the CIA to pick some of the team rather than do it himself. The soldier-of-fortune community was a relatively small one. In the years since he’d left MI-6 to work on his own as a freelance agent, he’d come to know most of the regular players. Those who did it for the money. Those who did it for the thrill. Those who wanted to serve but had been disenchanted by bureaucratic bullshit getting in the way of action. Like him.

But that night there were two people the CIA told him to use. One he knew and considered a friend. The other a stranger, but not new to the game, he’d been told. Those two people were responsible for providing intelligence information. The rest of the unit was to engage the compound where it was suspected that a DEA agent was being held. Their mission had been to confirm that the hostage was alive and to extract him if possible.

A task like that relied more on intel than it did on men with guns. That was why two had been chosen to gather and provide the information that the team would need.

Tarak knew one of the two was a traitor.

Unfortunately his first clue that the mission had gone to shit was when he heard shots being fired ahead of schedule. He hadn’t given the command to move forward but the explosives were suddenly triggered. A shower of gunfire over their heads had them all running for cover. The guerillas working for the drug lord were behind them in the jungle instead of at their posts inside the compound where they were supposed to be.

Tarak had immediately called for a retreat but their communication had been compromised and all he’d heard was static.

He’d found the bodies of Sheppard, O’Neill and Grace on his way out. All of them his men. It had been Grace, clinging to his last breath, that had cost Tarak the wound to his leg. He’d been lifting him when he got hit from behind. By the time he fell to his knees Grace was already dead.

His only recourse had been to run.

Once more Tarak kneaded the muscles in his leg, harder this time so he could feel the pain and remind himself that he was alive.

Why had fate saved him? Was he a better man? He doubted it.

Sheppard had been a money-hungry bastard but good at his work. O’Neill had been a marvel with explosives, and he had taken an unnatural thrill in blowing things up. But Grace was neither. Grace had been a friend. A loner. A good soldier. He’d had Tarak’s back more than once. He’d been trustworthy and in the soldier-for-hire business that kind of reputation was gold.

And now his body was rotting someplace in a South American jungle. Food for the native inhabitants.

Grace didn’t deserve that. None of them did. On the way out of that mess what consumed Tarak was why he had survived. He could see no reason why fate had been so kind to him. The dark thoughts had forced him to seek answers, and the only place he could think to begin such a journey was here. Among his mother’s people.

He’d been right. After a few weeks at the monastery with help from his mother’s uncle, Punab, he’d started to realize it was time to let go of the guilt. Time to move on with this life.

Which ultimately led him to the question…what next? He’d been thinking about his future when the fever had grabbed hold of him. It had occurred to him, even as he felt his fever spiking, that the wound in his leg should have been healing. Only it hadn’t been.