Chapter Ten: The Eyes of His Father
Jericho led the caravan across the vast desert landscape, Anja and Babagorl sat next to each other in one of the carefully crafted carts, a canvas covered canopy kept them shielded from the harsh rays of the sun.
Anja was a quick study of the spoken language, and every leg of the journey allowed her to work on expanding her vocabulary and ability to primarily communicate with Babagorl.
Most in the caravan didn't have strong feelings towards Anja in the positive or negative but Levi didn't like Anja.
All he saw was entitlement, he felt she looked down at him from an Ivory Tower.
In reality, Anja was cautious, close to fearful even of the heavily scarred man with one eye.
Levi had never had a wife; he'd never been in a place to support a wife, raise a family. He wasn't able to secure his own land, sail under his own steam, always in service to someone else.
His intimacy amounted to frantic coupling, rhythmic thrusting that made him feel guilt and shame under the eyes of his god, how he'd desecrated his temple by fucking on its hallowed ground.
As Jericho continued to move his caravan northwest, Levi's disdain for Anja continued to grow.
Across the globe in his encrypted fortress, Hess scoured the world for Anja.
Hess had eyes everywhere, had his locusts in every major port, out post around the world, his words were carried out by the hands of whores, criminals and law enforcement officers.
His swarm had received photos of Anja, after some time, there was word of a woman who matched Anja's appearance, a woman with a swollen belly who stood out amongst the caravan even swathed in silken layers.
Someone had seen glances of Anja nestled between sacks of grain.
Some felt she was a bad omen, that she should be crucified, others saw her as a blessing, a sign of many years of good crops wherever she'd stepped foot.
Some said she was a demoness carrying the son of Satan.
Others said her womb had been blessed by their God, that she was carrying goodness, fortune and plenty for the next 144,000 years.
Hess's swarm of locusts in the form of pick pockets and tour guides chased down each lead about the traveling pregnant woman.
His loyal locusts worked tirelessly to procure photos of Anja from amongst the caravan.
As Hess waited for the images to be transmitted to him and confirmation of her identity, Hess deep dove into who Anja was, and found out about her father.
His fingers itched for that kind of knowledge, wanted to exploit her grey matter for the secrets of nuclear fusion
The confirmation that the woman in the photos was Anja spawned a series of near-heart palpitations within Hess's chest.
He immediately had some of his technological vermin manipulate the photos, distort the pixels and pervert the captured picture of Anja alive into one of a dead woman.
Her distended belly still, her body violated pre and postmortem.
Hess transmitted the images through an encrypted jet stream through the dark web, the images delivered securely to Bane, initially without a single word, date or location.
Hess sat back in his orthopedic chair, an item of luxury, fantasizing Bane's anguish when he laid eyes upon his dead, pregnant wife.
He took in a deep, shuddery breath, his nerve-ends tingling with the anticipation of breaking Bane's spirit, his will.
Decimating all hope.
Across the globe, the digitally altered images were delivered in several stages of encryption with a kill switch firewall.
Bane sent Cain from the room when the heavily encoded messages arrived.
He locked the door and secured the deadbolt after Cain's exit, ignoring the concern etched on the physician's face.
Six photos appeared on the seventeen-inch screen, one-by-one.
The color enhanced, the red was wetter and the shadows a deeper black.
Death in high definition.
Bane's pupils rapidly dilated as his optic nerve became overwhelmed processing the heavily altered images of Anja in various stages of death, lividity digitally applied to her exposed skin in broad purple and deep blue brush strokes.
Her swollen belly was mottled with congested arteries, full of clotted blood upon the moment her heart ceased to beat.
After a heavily pregnant pause, the wash of sweat on Bane's bare skin cooled, his body temperature dropped, and his stomach went sour.
His scarred lips parted and a pained howl emerged, the sound of an animal being ripped apart, his gut-torn belly spit acidic bile up his damaged esophagus before he dropped to the ground, the wood floor splintered under his kneecaps as he crashed.
Broken.
Outside the closed, hand-carved door, Doctor Cain Adamson hadn't gone far, he'd remained still, silent, his ear pressed to the finely sanded wood grain.
Cain burst into the room, alarmed to see Bane on his knees, his rich, caramel orbs were shiny with a film of unshed tears.
In that moment, another message pinged in the right, bottom corner of the HD screen.
Bane's breath was ragged as he forced himself to click on the message while Cain remained standing, not moving, a specter.
The message contained a set of coordinates and nothing further.
Cain's eyes went to the crystal-clear clarity of the screen, seeing the abrupt images of Anja's decimated body, squinting at the coordinates as he typed them into a tablet that was charging.
The screensaver on the tablet was a bright photo of Anja and the children.
The tablet had been a gift to the children, and they always left it about the house uncharged.
Cain frowned as the map swirled on the screen, bringing satellite images of the coordinates to life on the small screen.
Cain stated an area in South America as he turned the tablet towards him.
Bane didn't look over, barely heard, instead he leaned closer to the screen, his exhalation fogging the still photos of Anja's ravaged corpse.
He blinked hard, fiercely determined to keep tears at bay as he imagined Anja decomposing on the rainforest floor
Bane saw her body becoming an ecosystem for battling titan and rhinoceros beetles, becoming a temporary home and sustenance for wandering spiders.
Anja would become much like the whale falls that continued to feed generations of life on the bottom of the ocean, plump pink octopi either basking amidst empty orbital sockets or frolicking in the diminishing cellular bone matrix.
Through his unshed tears, Bane saw something besides the dead body of his beloved.
He narrowed his eyes, snorted back wet phlegm as his breathing grew steadier as he glimpsed in the photographs, something that didn't belong.
Bane spied something the digital pixel manipulator had neglected to distort.
He found a bread crumb that proved Hess was a liar.
Cain flinched when Bane jumped to his feet, splinters crunching under his boots as he whipped his face towards the good doctor.
"The Demon's Children," Bane rasped, his eyes clear, bright and roiling with wrath.
Cain shook his head, "we killed them all, you're seeing digital shit," he dismissed.
Bane pointed to the screen, to the background of one of the photos that showed Anja's face, her eyes sunken into her skull, dried fluid present from her visible ear, nostril and corner of her closed eye.
Cain leaned in to see where Bane was pointing, his heart certainly stopped beating when he saw the grey and purple flag of the Demon's Children, the bright yellow center of the flag was an irregular circle.
Even through the expert manipulation of Anja's alleged corpse, the person behind the distorted orchestra of pixelation had failed to erase the flag from the sadistic group, all fallouts from a failed coup who'd banded together.
They'd been gaining ground when several governments contacted an acquaintance of Cain Adamson.
It was a job offer not to be refused with how much money was on the table for wiping out the Demon's Children.
The DC had kept themselves alive and formidable by any means necessary, trafficking of the living and tangible, theft, rape and murder.
They'd become a thorn in the side to the government in whose land they resided.
That country didn't want to get their hands dirty and were pleased to count out money instead.
Cain had contacted Bane for the murderous trip overseas.
The Demon's Children ceased to live.
Cain knew in that moment, just as Bane had already alighted on, exactly where Anja was based on DC's flag and steadfast dedication to the region.
Bane knew that Cain's small smile was the doctor's thought that he'd get to take out some DC stragglers that had preserved as he accompanied Bane in search of Anja.
Bane assembled an arsenal as Cain networked and pulled together a small, deadly group of men to be his and Bane's plus-one's to the blood bath amongst the sand.
They were already behind in leaving.
Hess had planned for his messages to be delivered precisely when they were, they'd been sent long after Bane might've had time to accomplish anything on the foreign soil.
By the time Bane stepped over the threshold of his home in the first step towards a sturdy utility vehicle, Hess had already found where Jericho had Anja hidden.
As Bane was driven as certainly faster than a speed safe for the dark, snow-covered roads, Hess had already descended on the caravan where Anja was nestled between large, burlap sacks full of grain.
When the plane that Cain had acquired touched down on the continent of Africa, Hess had already flown away with Anja, had left the sands for a place that was cold.
After departing the sand, Hess taken her from scorching heat under a cloudless sky, to the icy and uncomfortably cold
Anja would see blue flowers as she was carried up a mountain.
It was hard to breathe.
It was not a welcome landscape.
Hess would force Bane to come back to his real home.
As Bane, Cain and the assorted men scrutinized the crime scene of the terrorized caravan and no signs of life, Bane found his throat go dry when he found a scarf clinging to a broken board.
He clutched the cloth in his hand, bringing it to his nose to breathe deeply, strands of her Anja's hairs had interwoven themselves in the burgundy fabric.
"What happened here?" Cain asked as he swept his eyes across the charred remains of Jericho's caravan.
He side-stepped a corpse with one eye as he joined Bane in staring at a body that had been trapped and trussed up fine, efficiently.
The man's body had been opened up from stem to stern, his intestines had spilled from his belly.
Colorful, fleshy laundry.
The looped coils of his bowels were covered in sand but that hadn't stopped the winged carrion eaters from filling their gullets as they flocked to the scene of carnage.
Hess and his bloodthirsty locusts had descended on the caravan at night, had caught everyone off guard as lives were taken by his rampaging legion.
Jericho had put up as much of a fight as he could, he wouldn't have had much better of a chance with advanced warning, he had not been born a murderer.
Hess had taken his time with Jericho as the caravan was burned to the ground.
He'd opened up Jericho with exquisite slowness, whispering to him in his father's tongue, telling him indecencies about his god, taunting him as he took his lord's name in vain with giddy glee.
Saliva had dripped from the corner of his lips as he'd smiled, "you wasted your time with her," he murmured as Anja was brought into Jericho's fading peripheral vision.
Jericho's life bled out of him before Hess turned his full attention on Anja, walking towards her with the bloody knife still in hand, dripping wetly with Jericho's blood.
Babagorl ran from the shadows and threw herself into Anja's arms as Hess came closer.
"Please don't take her from me," Anja cried as one of his locust's ripped Babagorl from her arms.
The little girl twisted around in the man's arms and slapped his skinny face, he immediately screwed up his face into anger and threw her roughly to the ground. She landed hard, with a grunt before Hess scoffed and ordered her gathered up and taken to the plane before he turned his eyes to Anja's face.
"You're the woman he chose," Hess purred as he squatted down, all long limbs, wiry.
"You're the one he'll do anything for, the one he wants back," Hess said, his lips pulling into a wide smile.
Anja pressed her lips together, angry words threatening to spill out.
It was all so overwhelming as she dropped her arms to cradle her belly and her growing child.
Hess's eyes tracked her movements, his smile turned to one that was more at home on a reptile's face.
"How desperate will he become to have you back?" he hissed as his hand snaked out and grabbed Anja's upper arm.
Inside Anja's womb, the fetus's mouth dropped open in insult when Hess's fingers, still wet with Jericho's blood tightened around her, staining her skin and garnet-colored shawl.
The fetus opened its eyes as Hess hauled Anja to her feet, it had its father's fiery eyes.
The fetus's unscarred lips opened, the soundless scream of injustice through the warm amniotic fluid accompanied by sheer fury, proved he was his father's son.