The Nephilim Protocol

Vibrations

"You're a Nephilim?."

Doc doesn't even look up from the medical book he's flipping through. "Yes," he says.

For a moment I can legitimately not say anything. I just gape at him. He looks up and sees my expression.

"Technically," he says, "the singular term is Nephil. Nephilim is plural."

"Wha ... how?" I ask.

I feel stupid. But he's just taking it so calmly. Just looking through various medical tools and their uses. Forceps and distractors and endoscopic cameras ... cameras! I glance towards the corner of the room. Shit! How could I be so stupid!?

"Don't worry about them," he says, smiling. "People are so rarely in the library, it's not hard to come up with a spoofing reel that the guards will ignore." He snaps the book closed. "You learn a few tricks at my age."

The way he always stoops over. His loose-fitting shirts. His age. "Your museum," I say. "Were you here when ... there was the invasion?"

"I was here." He fits the book onto the shelf. "I was here when we splashed through the freezing water to the land. I was here when red sprayed across the white snow. I saw a thousand men rush to meet their deaths on the hill you boys were fighting on."

I feel vaguely chastised. "So how old are you?"

"Old." He seems to think. "In World War I, I tended to men in the Argonne Forest. I became a doctor on the fields of Crimea, and I was with the Prussian horse at Vienna. In Malta in 1565, I stood against the Ottomans, much as I had done at Rhodes in 1480. I battled the Little Father of the Huns on the Catalonian Plains. I came to the Holy Land with the First Crusade, but I'd been there many years before, sent with the Gaulish auxiliary to the Roman forces. Before that ..." He pauses, and frowns. "...I don't recall."

"So ... pretty old." I'm not really sure what else to say. "That ... that amulet you gave me," I say, tugging it out of my shirt. "There's something special about it, isn't there? "

He nods. "Very special. Did you notice the inscription on the back?"

"I can't read it. It's gibberish."

"Didn't that strike you as odd?" Doc says, loosening his tie. "After all, Nephilim like ourselves can understand any language, spoken or written."

"Um." I blink.

"Ancient Mycenean Greek," he says, leaning forward to tap the metal. "It should be Minoan, but there are no examples of that left. But Mycenean is close enough to our original tongue to supply the need."

"What's that ... uh ... supposed to ..." I stop. Doc's unbuttoning his shirt, which is kinda creepy, and I'm not sure if I've misread this whole situation.

But he stops at just two buttons in the middle of the shirt and parts the fold so I can see.

Sunk in the middle of his chest is a clear green stone. It glows with an inward light, pulsing slightly. There's no sign of a scar or healing tissue around it. It looks almost like part of his body.

"The hole in a Nephil's chest is not an accident," Doc says. "It's a design. A feature. A slot for the Nephil's Orb."

"The what now?" I say, tearing my eyes away from the glowing stone.

"An Orb. Much about the Nephilim can be likened to a computer. You can program languages and fighting moves into your being, with even blank implants like the ones they give you at the camp here. But an Orb ... contains a Code."