The Keeper: A Short Story Prequel to Forbidden Read Online Free PDF

a soft leather cloth wrapped around something from his pack. “I created the means by which it was done.”
    “Means?” Pavel said. “What means?”
    “The virus that has taken your humanity.”
    His brother stood. “You must go. You, who say these terrible things. Harbinger of death. You will infect our path to Bliss with your fear!”
    Talus remained seated on the log and carefully untied the string that bound the cloth. Inside lay a clear vial containing a liquid the color of blood. He set the small vessel in a knothole next to him. Firelight flickered over the rounded glass surface.
    “If only you were right. I would go into the wilderness never to return! The truth is that you are the first people I’ve had contact with for two years, and because of my isolation I’ve retained my humanity. But now my life is no longer in humanity’s interest.”
    “The first human you’ve had contact with? What about the girl?”
    “Only a story to judge your reaction. I had to know.”
    “Know what?”
    “That you were indeed among the dead.”
    “Dead men don’t walk and breathe and bleed!” Gustov said.
    “They don’t?” Talus said quietly.
    Gustov started to object again, but Pavel held up his hand to stop him. Perhaps it was better to allow the man his delusion.
    “Let him speak. Please, Gustov, sit.”
    His brother hesitated, then complied, and Talus continued.
    “Under Sirin’s message of hope, the world found peace. But that peace began to crumble while you were hidden here in the Russian wasteland. It was then that I made the discovery that crushed the world.”
    Pavel could not deny his intrigue at the man’s tale.
    “I was among seven elite geneticists who oversaw a secret mission to unravel the genetic roots of emotion. I developed the program, the computer models that helped us understand our research. None of us knew who ran the project, only that we had limitless resources at our disposal. Do you know what DNA is?”
    “DNA? Yes.”
    Did all madmen speak with such precision and clarity?
    “It was I, Talus Gurov, who identified the genetic components that make us superior to animals and define our very humanity—the DNA responsible for controlling specific functions of the limbic system where the emotions reside.”
    “But it is our
spirit
that makes us human!” Gustov cried.
    “Did God create only spirit? Or did he create the human who loves and laughs and hopes?”
    “Who are you to teach us about God’s intentions?”
    “I am a human! I am filled with laughter and hope…and tonight with sorrow and fear and a terrible anger.” Talus took a deep breath. “What I didn’t know was that my findings were being used to create a highly contagious virus named Legion, which contains the power to strip away our very humanity. It also rids man of all emotions but one. The only one required to control the masses.”
    Pavel knew it before the stranger even said it.
    “Fear,” he whispered.
    “Yes. Fear.”
    “But Sirin would never condone such a move—”
    “You’re right,” Talus said. “He didn’t. When he refused the recommendation to infect the world as a permanent solution to the ambition and hatred that plagued mankind, Megas had him assassinated and set the virus loose. That was two years ago. Now it has infected every living human on Earth. You feel no emotion except fear, Pavel and Gustov Malincovich, because on one of your visits to an outpost, you contracted Legion and lost your humanity. Haven’t you noticed an increase in your fear these past two years?”
    The question struck a chord of alarm in Pavel. How could this man know of their change these past two years?
    “We mastered our emotions through terrible struggle,” Gustov objected.
    “No! The struggle you faced was
before
Legion took your humanity, two years ago. What you have embraced as a victory through these last two years of solitude and discipline was the onset of Legion. You did not
overcome
your emotions.