Finding Darkness

Chapter 28 Beautiful

"What's down there? What did you find?" He asked.

"It's more like what found them." Malachi waved at the three men, who by then were being helped away from the door.

"What's down there?" Steve eyed the door, then stepped away from it.

"Something better left buried." Tamar growled. Standing, she walked away without turning around. "Come on Mal, remember your promise." It wasn't a question, and it hadn't been phrased like one, and Malachi knew it.

"You're going to just let her talk to you like you have to do what she tells you?" Steve looked over at Malachi as he turned to follow Tamar.

"No, I don't have to do what she tells me. But I will do what she asks me to do. You just have to know how she talks, that's all."

Steve shook his head. A man with that much power following a freak girl like a puppy, he'd never understand that, not for the life of him.

Malachi arrived back in their room a few minutes after Tamar. He'd planned it that way so he could give her time to compose herself. Trying to get her to talk about anything remotely personal was hard enough. Doing it when she wasn't ready would get him nowhere.

Opening the door with great care, he saw that the light was off, the room as dark and still as a tomb. Stepping into the darkness, he stopped and shut the door behind. Out of the onyx he could hear her breathing. It came hard and harsh, her emotion made manifest. Malachi went through his various vision modes until he could see her. She was huddled under the bed, curled into her ball, back away from the wall, her head pushed against it.

He walked slowly to the edge of the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor. Minutes passed with him in that position, within arm's reach of Tamar. He made no move to touch her, grab for her, or anything else. He had come to know her more closely than even he was willing to admit. She needed time to deal with her inner demons in her own time, at her own pace. Try to press and she would only withdraw inward. So he would wait until she was ready, besides it would give him to do his Bible reading.

"How do you do that?" He was only five verses into the chapter when he heard her small voice.

"Do what?"

"Put up with me. Anyone else would have left, I would have left, yet you've sat there for almost a half hour. How long were you planning on waiting for me?" He heard the voice, but Tamar made no move to come out from under the bed.

"As long as it took." He heard a brief scuffling a few seconds later, and like a wraith, she was in front of him, perched on the edge of the bed.

"Why? Do you have any idea what I've done? That thing back there could have been me, should have been me. She threw that thing away like someone else would throw away a bone from a steak. It had been down here for over five years, and you killed it like it was nothing, just nothing."

"If you hadn't noticed, it was doing its best to do me great bodily harm. I only did what needed to be done." He interrupted her.

"I know that, but do you know what that thing was?" before he could ask a question, she pushed on. "It was what I might have been, one of her many experiments. Each one getting her closer to a viable subject, me."

"You? But that thing didn't look anything like you." Malachi's hands came forward and, with the greatest of care, he pulled her to his chest.

"I told you you didn't, couldn't understand. When Hayworth started her little freak show, she was just getting into the field of genetic engineering. But then the Rougarians invaded, so she had to go underground. Being without all the resources she was accustomed to, she had to improvise. In her case, that meant experiment, lots of experiments. Each one brought her closer and closer to what she wanted, me. But it took her over three hundred tries before her process could produce a creature that would fit her needs, and even after she perfected it, she still grew five viable subjects before she created me. I don't know why. It was like I was a one shot deal so she wanted to make sure she could get it right." Tamar began to cling to Malachi's chest as she spoke. She couldn't understand it, but the more she talked, the firmer her grip became. "But I can't get over seeing that thing. It was created so I could be made, but it never had a chance to live, and I can't seem to shake the thought that it's my fault..." She was a few words from breaking down crying, but she wouldn't do that, she was stronger than that.