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Amity Among the Fallen - REVIEW THIS STORY

Written by Ephiginia
Last updated: 01/02/2007 02:01:11 AM

Chapter 1

He was one of a kind, my Rodney- a brilliant mind behind a face the seraphim would have envied; an unruffled countenance ever calm, sharp tongue ever ready with sound advice or a well-phrased lie. He was Oxford's darling, a gentleman unrefused in any elite circle, the apple of many a fair lady's eye. He could have gone everywhere and done everything. That he might have someday married royally and lived forever at court I do not doubt, though he was not born in high circumstances. But he chose instead to follow me. I was his Lucifer. I lead him from the gates of Heaven to a Hell darker than I myself could have imagined; he had followed unknowingly, ready for the sport, ready to have his name gouged into the books of science and history not yet written. I was his mistake.

And so when I woke in the morning, there he would be in the laboratory, recording, cleaning, observing, or reading. Most often it would be the later; he would become so engrossed in Darwin or Nansen or Bush that he wouldn't remember that he should sleep, or that he had accepted an invitation to a formal dinner, or that there was church. That is how I remember him the best: rumpled hair and crinkled clothes, curled up on a ratty old chair with a book clutched before him, gaslight falling on his sharp features and making him seem older than he really was. He wouldn't notice my arrival until I had begun to work, or I had made a particularly loud noise, and then he would grin tiredly and say, "I do believe that I've lost my time again, Nathan." He would talk of what great thing he'd been imbibing while he helped me, sharing his own opinions, asking for mine, and then making adjustments to his own theories when he came upon something he hadn't before considered. We would occasionally debate over hot drinks in a card room, or talk long into the night of any subject of science. We were more than just associates; we were friends. Great friends.

After a time, my own studies became not so "clean," not so orthodox as those of other scientists. I had taken a great interest in the inner structure of our physical humanity, of what made us who were are; our genetics. My experiments were centered, then, on humanity itself, and I likewise used whoever I could to test with. I did not hide these things from Rodney, because I trusted him more even than I trusted myself. He advised that I keep what I did secret; perhaps the ends would justify the means, but not if I were to be caught, but he was frightened all the same. Poor man. He wouldn't have left me for the world. He "believed in me," he said that I "would make a difference. a good difference." But my fascination grew more intense. I became more obsessive in the laboratory as my wife and I began to quarrel, and he'd watch with both horror and fascination as I committed heinous experiment after heinous experiment; at times he would draw me aside and try to convince me that ethic, though a pliable thing in his eyes, was being twisted and gnarled too wickedly here, that I was sure to bring the wrath of God and any other greater power to exist upon us all if I continued. I did not stop. Rumors seeped out concerning my ways, and both his name and mine were tarnished. He would not stay late reading any longer, but went to his lonely home dragging his feet at sundown. One evening, when I had been trying to take sample's of a girl's heart tissue, she had wailed so pitifully that Rodney had taken a vial of a hemlock extract and forced it into her mouth, knocking me aside when I attempted to stop him.

"You've gone mad, Essex," he'd said.

I had responded: "Yes."

He'd left, overwrought, not bothering to remember his coat and hat. But he had been back the next night, wishing to take me out for a drink, and "to discuss." I'd refused, and the anguished look on his face had nearly driven me to the ground.

I did not see him again until my wife was taken away, my son died, the Royal Society had deserted me, and the Apocalypse had claimed me.

It was not Apocalypse who took my humanity. If nothing else, I have learned by now that to be human is more than to possess a certain set of DNA codes- it is to have a soul, to have a conscience and a heart. I had those things at first, directly after my transformation, and they drove me to Rodney's door.

I'd knocked three times before he had answered, and when he'd come at last, he was quite obviously drunk, eyes red and wild. He'd blanched at my changes, my appearance, but hadn't turned away. Rodney had never really turned away, and in that he was alone. He asked me what had happened, and I told him the truth. He'd called me a lying bastard then, and had gone to sleep; when he woke, he demanded to hear the story again, down to the last detail, and he had listened and watched with an intensity beyond that which I had ever seen in him before.

"What will you do now?" he'd asked me. I'd been clear, told him that I had no intention of slowing down or stopping. I wanted to go on, to use my new understanding to further my work, without the bonds of ethicality to hold me back. And I told him that I didn't want him to leave me; I wanted him to stay, to be my partner still, to be my friend and keep me half-sane.

He'd smiled grimly at that. "It seems to be a bit too late," he'd whispered. "I don't know if I could stay with you. You're not Nathaniel Essex." The look in his eyes. it was as though he were speaking my eulogy, looking down at my grave. There were thunderclouds in those eyes, walls being built of unknown emotional substance which he himself might not have fathomed. "You are no longer the friend I held dear."

And that is when Sinister was truly born, when I had reached out and throttled him with one hand, choking those tears out of him along with his life. He wouldn't have to pity me, wouldn't have to mourn me- he would rest peacefully without knowing that his companion had become a monster.

But I could not go without him.

I took him with me, down a thousand flights of stairs to an infernal realm of technological Hell on earth, where I was now master. Under the crust of England I tinkered with Rodney's preserved corpse until I'd learned at last how to replicate him, how to clone him. And that new Rodney, though not entirely like his predecessor, did stay. He kept to my heels like a puppy, because he had grown from my tubes and solutions. He did not have the fire and spirit and thirst that Rodney had; he did not have the deep pools of thought and sentiment in his eyes. This new creation I could not love, and neither could I the next, nor the next; but at last I took what I had left of the original, and I gave him up. That is to say, I made an infant of him, allowed him to grow as a child, to become a man over time in the hands of society. I could not make him, but perhaps that was because I had made the clone my own from start to finish; Rodney had not been my creation, or my slave, or my child. He'd been my friend, a creation and slave and child to other people, other things.

He is a man now. He is no Oxford scholar, and he is not known even as Rodney Leighton now; he is Remy LeBeau, a thief, a soul as warm-hearted in the core as my old friend, but just as troubled- and it is I who have caused his troubles, as I did his ancestor; I who have ruined his life. He has Rodney's spirit-torn eyes.

I am his Lucifer. He followed me into darkness not knowing the repercussions, he is unredeemable because of me. I grieve for him- them- still. But I cannot let him go- he reminds me of who and what I was, what integrity I had, what honor I'd known. What sanity I've lost. Remy LeBeau will not be the last Rodney to walk this earth. When he dies, another will take his place. and another. and another. Until I die, if I ever do, and perhaps not even then, unless God can reclaim an angel who did not know what Lucifer took him to when he slipped from the heights to the depths.

And Rodney, I can only hope that, in some incarnation, you will forgive me.

"I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred- that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt... if we let our friend become cold and selfish and exacting without a remonstrance, we are no true lover, no true friend."

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

 

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