Blonde hair in a messy bob, pale skin, dark longcoat, brief glimpses of the Mark of Cain etched on her shoulder before the coat covered it. The Mind stepped away from the limousine, which remained parked as she approached Isaac. She must’ve listened to his advice in their earlier meeting, because her eyes now softened with her smile. But even the soft eyes looked like someone trying to replicate a human face - still unnatural, still unnerving.
The Mind walked slowly, taking in the scenes of battle on the avenue, the flowers stained with blood in the garden. Then she looked at Isaac.
“We meet again.”
Isaac frowned and stood his ground. Yes, she could turn into a giant and crush him, but he was reaching a breaking point.
“People are dead. I don’t have time to play football.”
“Neither do I,” she admitted. “I’m here on duty.”
Isaac raised an eyebrow. “Duty?”
The Mind knelt next to a pile of melted intestines strewn across the grass. “I’m the State Police officer in charge of investigating these recent terrorist attacks. I know the Atalantan Restorationist Front struck that Naval Police building.” She retrieved a bloody pamphlet held in the hands of a frozen State Police officer. His comrades further down the avenue had been removing more posters and pamphlets from message boards and trees and telephone poles, nailed there by the terrorists, before the Mind froze them with her arrival. “And looks like the Lawrencite Restorationist Front was behind this attack.”
“What do you know?” Isaac demanded to hear. His fists clenched while the frozen bodies looked at him silently. “This whole thing reeks of conspiracy.”
The Mind placed the pamphlet in an inner pocket of her longcoat. “My my, Isaac. Are you accusing me of something? Friends should trust each other, you know.”
“We’re not friends.”
For a moment, Isaac thought he went too far. But then the Mind sighed and nodded. “I understand. As I recall, we must be comfortable around one another and have shared memories to be friends, yes? I don’t suppose you’re comfortable around me yet. I don’t blame you. I’ve been keeping secrets, and friends shouldn’t do that.”
Isaac narrowed his eyes. “Then spill ‘em.”
It was a longshot, and he didn’t expect to hear any, but the Mind giggled and pushed a loose strand of blonde hair off her face.
“Very well. You still refer to me as ‘the Mind’, right?” She shook her head. “That won’t do. The Mind was the colloquial name used to refer to me during my childhood-”
“Childhood?” Isaac always assumed she’d been this adult woman for the entirety of her existence. I mean, I doubt the Heart had a childhood, and they’re cut from the same cloth.
“Childhood is the era in which you’re taught by adults, correct? And then you’re eventually cast out into the world where you must strike your own fortune and pursue your own path.” The Mind tapped her temple. “I’ve undergone the same experience. The facility where I grew up was my childhood. The Unleashing which freed me marked the transition to adulthood. No more orders, no more restrictions…I was free to do as I pleased. Isn’t that a scary thing for a living computer program? Someone created for a specific purpose now forced to find their own?"
Isaac didn’t even know where to start. What facility? What’s her relationship to the Unleashing? What purpose she did have beyond serving as a body for the Heart?
But she spoke before he could bombard her with all those questions. “Oh, but that’s not the secret I wanted to share. As I said, the Mind was the name those scientists used to refer to me in the facility. My technical name was Faust-08927313. That’s what appeared in the official records. But once I left the facility, I cast those names aside. I had to choose a name for myself, you see. It’s the same name the State Police knows me as.”
She reached into her longcoat and produced her identification papers. She held them up from the top for Isaac to see. Right next to her pale thumb was the name KANE.
“Cain,” Isaac realized, his brows furrowed in thought.
The Mind revealed the etching on her shoulder - the octagon with the diagonal line running through it. “Not very clever, I know. The woman with the Mark of Cain names herself Kane. But you humans are lucky. Your parents give you names, usually good ones, and you don’t have to give a second thought about it. But I had to name myself. It took me a while to realize I had the freedom to do so. But even so, it took me a long while to come up with it.”
Isaac expected that line of thinking to be over, but the Mind still held the papers up. “I have to confess, Isaac, that I haven’t truly revealed every reason for my interest in you. It’s true, you’re an unknown variable who entered my life. An average, unassuming man who somehow got caught up in the threads of destiny. But destiny sometimes produces strange coincidences.”
She shifted her thumb, revealing her full name.
“Rebecca Kane,” Isaac read aloud. “I don’t get it. What’s the coincidence?”
“Isaac and Rebecca,” the Mind concluded. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected you to understand a reference to an old, old story.”
“I know old stories,” Isaac countered. “I know the story of Cain. He grew jealous of his brother’s gifts to God, so he killed him. God punished Cain by forcing to wander the planet.”
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Recognition briefly flashed in the Mind’s eyes. “You understand parts of my story then.”
Isaac swallowed in disbelief. “You can’t be serious…are you that Cain?”
Kane stared at him, then let out a mechanical laugh. “Wouldn’t that be something? No, that Cain is a myth, and even if he was real, he would be thousands of years old by now. But myths become myths because they share similarities with our own world.”
“You killed someone close to you,” Isaac deduced. “And your creator, the man from the Odessa organization with its twin lightning bolts, forced you to wander the planet. Is that it?”
Kane tilted her head, giving him a surreal smile. “You’re getting close. But it’s not fun if you just ask me questions all day. That’s not what I’m here to talk about. Time is running short for you, Isaac. Plans are already in motion. Should I have to kill you, there are things I’m content with you not knowing. But there are some things I must tell you because you are indeed very interesting to me.”
Isaac wasn’t sure how to respond to that. He decided to keep asking questions until she shut him off for good. “Then what’s the coincidence between Isaac and Rebecca?”
“You’re like a dog after a bone. Can’t let up, can you?” Kane walked toward him, then past him, slowly circling. “Then I’ll leave you with this. Do you know what happens to Cain after he’s cast out by God?”
Isaac shook his head, so she continued. “Adam and Eve had a third son, a man named Seth. Their lineage continued through Seth. But Cain was still out there, you see. He had his own family, and they weren’t bound to his curse of wandering, so they founded their own cities. Their own civilizations. The descendants of Seth and the descendants of Cain ruled the planet, but both became wicked and proud. Blasphemous enough for God to sunder the planet-”
“With the Unleashing?” Isaac asked, his thoughts getting ahead of him. A moment later, he realized that the Unleashing was five hundred years ago, while this other mythical sundering would have taken place thousands of years ago. Yet there was evidence standing in front of him that reality and myths could be intertwined.
“Of a sorts,” Kane said. “He sent down the Flood to kill every man, woman, and child on this planet. More than that - every animal, every plant, right down to the worms. Everything and everyone drowned in this flood - except for a chosen few. Now, of the descendants of Seth and the descendants of Cain, who do you think God selected these few from?”
“Cain was cursed, so…Seth?”
“Indeed. The lineage of Cain was destroyed, the lineage of Seth preserved. We are facing similar circumstances now.” She approached Isaac, but he found himself wrapped in some sort of frozen state of shock. She touched his chest with an icy finger. “The lineage of Seth.” And then she touched her own chest. “The lineage of Kane.”
“...what?” That’s all Isaac could say. He simply didn’t understand.
She recognized this, because she let out that inhumane giggle again. “So why do you think I might be responsible for these terrorist attacks, Isaac?”
So wrapped up in this esoteric nonsense, Isaac almost forgot the dead bodies surrounding him, the terrorist attack that just concluded moments ago. He shook his head and got himself back on track. “These guys were well-organized and well-armed. That takes money and backing.”
“Couldn’t it have been Caesar?” Kane suggested. “These are Restorationist movements, after all.”
“They claim to be.” Isaac rubbed his chin. “But that’s not really proof, is it? Caesar would’ve consolidated his grip on power after the junior officer faction was wiped out during the armada battle. These terrorist attacks don’t seem to be some sort of step to Kallipolis. It’s more like…they’re designed to create tension between Arcadians and non-Arcadians. This is where the wealthy Arcadians live and shop, after all.”
Kane brought her own hand to her chin. “And you think I’m somehow involved?”
“I wouldn’t rule it out,” he admitted. “You have the means.”
“And the motivation?”
Isaac stepped forward. “Because you’re State Police. You killed my brother, kidnapped Kassandra, lobotomized Karin Reed, even killed Bell’s brother. You might just be the biggest criminal organization in the entire country. If anyone has a track record of killing civilians, it’s you and your group.”
Kane smirked. “Like a dog chasing a bone,” she repeated. “You have bits and pieces now, Isaac. You have inklings of the Odessa, the Department of Domestic Security, the population exchanges, my origins, the Unleashing, the Biblical fight that has been reignited in the present day. The Knights of Greater Arcadia, the ethnic Restorationist Fronts, the Naval Police, the Cultivator Marines. It’s all part of one grand puzzle, and I’d like to see if you can solve it with the time left to you.”
With that, Kane put her arms behind her shoulders and strolled back towards the car. Before opening the door, she glanced back at Isaac. “Sorry, but I can’t resist. I simply must tell you.” She turned and faced him. “The child of Isaac and Rebecca inherited the Kingdom of God, and perhaps they might do so again.”
Before he could answer, she gave him a smile full of white teeth, something like a shark trying to play nice with its prey. “Farewell, Isaac.”
Kane slipped back into the car and closed the door behind her. She winked that red eye in Isaac's direction and her time-freezing power disappeared right as the limousine took off. Isaac stood there dumbfounded as the dozens of men and women frozen in place regained control of their movements. The conversations, paused mid-word, continued along in slipshod fashion, stumbling about as everyone wracked their heads in confusion. A few of them stumbled forward, and all of them, even Osip, even the State Police officers and Asps, turned their heads instinctively toward the departing limousine.
“Kane herself showed up?” an Asp mumbled, forgetting the Naval agents around him. “That’s her car, alright.”
A big officer nudged him on the shoulder. “That’s Captain Kane, Sergeant. And this is the biggest attack in Narragansett since the armada. ‘Course she’d show up, even if it’s just a drive-by to study the scenery.”
Captain Kane. The way these officers and Asps speak, they got no idea about Kane’s true identity as the Mind. She's just their commanding officer, another cog in the vast State Police hierarchy.
The same officer approached Osip, speaking confidently even if the Cultivator Marine was a head taller. “Alright, let’s wrap this up. The State Police and Naval Police boys will take care of this. You Cultivator Marines get the hell out of here before I ask you all for statements.”
Osip studied the man for a moment, his eyes flashing in recognition. “Very well, Lieutenant Rosenfeld.”
It was clear that Osip was trying to defuse the situation before anything escalated. If the officers wanted the Marines to get out of here, then the Marines wouldn’t deny the offer. They had a lot to discuss, anyhow.
Coleridge looked at his fellow officers, then back at Isaac and Reed. “Well, see you guys later. We’ll have to get lunch under better circumstances next time. And, uh…” He idly slid a boot across the grass below him. “Thanks for helping me step up back there.”
Again, Isaac didn’t do anything, and under normal circumstances he would tell Coleridge that he found his courage within himself, but Isaac merely nodded in farewell. Reed did the same. Coleridge adjusted his cap and departed, his head held high for once.
Reed rubbed her eyes, stood on her tip-toes, and placed her head on Isaac’s shoulder like a tired sibling. “What just happened?”
Isaac let her rest her head there. “I think somebody wants me to have a kid with them.”