The following day as the clouds greyed and the sweet, yellow light spread, Jacob was kicking a dusty football with his mates out on the field and suddenly remembered a chilling passage from Revelations or he thought it was Revelations. Wasn’t there a claim in The Bible that the Anti-Christ would set up a new world order, a unified world government eerily similar to Aryan’s planned utopia?

  He knew it would sound lame, dumb but he asked his friends about the existence of the passage.

  Little Arkie appeared quizzical. Joey shrugged.

  “There’s an old movie with that theme, The Omen or something. I think I may also have heard the idea referenced sometimes in books and films. So likely, I guess.”

  Arkie was appearing distinctly bored, but his cute, pinched face suddenly lit up eagerly.

  “Hey, I once knew this Arabic guy, very religious. He told me something like this but claimed it was the other way round; that The Messiah sets up the World Government and then the Anti-Christ comes along to challenge him. Or something.”

  Jacob wondered why his friends kept using the phrase or something lately. It was rather irritating. Yet his heart tightened a little; did this mean Aryan could be the Messiah? God’s Messenger, like Shiver, so ardently claimed. Maybe Jacob was the devil’s servant? Led down the road of good intentions that yet lead to only dust? He shook his head. Those snarky little crows, those mad, giggling murders were not angelic creatures surely…

  Nonetheless, he touched the virtualizer in his pocket. Maybe Emanuel was the Anti-Christ and Aryan the Messiah? It sounded silly but dwelling on how dark and depraved the world had become full of drunken misery and filmed beheadings watched by even school children on the web and people throwing their waste on each other for pleasure, you had to wonder…

  In the afternoon he decided to attend another rally of Aryan’s World United Party.

  Aryan was speaking about man being Earth’s custodian and about how love needed to be held above material things. About a humankind of Moral Grace who dwells upon goodness, tills gently the earth, preserves the calving of the does and gives fruit and honey to every poor, wandering soul. To each famished little one dressed in rags aplenty. While he is also deriding the cluttered shelves of miserly gold hoarded by the men who reap more than they sow. Every cleaner prevents plague and the farmer feeds many. No man’s “contribution” is worth the breath of a thousand others. ”

  He finished his speech with the proudest of smiles and Shiver gazed at him quite adoringly: her face illuminated and with a faint hint of blue, which Jacob had never noticed before. A pretty, glowing, lightest blue mingled with ivory. Strange.

  Jacob in the aftermath of the rally went to find Shiver amongst the crowd and saw her embracing someone affectionately; a young girl who seemed familiar. Very thin, slender, almost waif-like, with long dark hair in a curly bundle and unblinking, sea-coloured eyes. Her face not quite plain but somewhat sweetly ordinary.

  Sally, it was Sally from the Wrighthouse Unit. She had survived. Yet how? He had distinctly read there were no survivors. Besides the hellions. Yet here she stood like a green-jacketed little ghost and despite Shiver claiming the pair would not harm her, he had assumed they must have. That they had shed even the most innocent of blood.

  She seemed very pleased to see Shiver and was talking happily and excitedly with her. While Mist lounged in the corner with a look of apathetic tedium on his face as myriad hopeful young ladies all tried to catch his beautiful, violet-greyed eye.

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  One of the young women saw Jacob and bestowed on him a flirtatious gaze before returning her sights to Mist.

  He saw Sally leaving with a cheerful little wave. Her stance was a little shy but very pleasant. Her hair as she bounded off was prettily bobbing. He noted she was one of those girls he might not go out of his way for at first but whose charm would probably ingratiate him to her more later.

  He went over to Shiver who was tugging at the lace of her dress in a manner possibly designed to attract male attention. It was working quite well. As many men were staring.

  Shiver looked sullen almost like she was wishing him away but when he handed her a flower as fair and pretty as she was, she smiled at him. Her lips and face became lit as if by a great, golden beam. He knew how she liked gifts; liked flattery and he wanted her to be as amenable honest and open with him as possible.

  “Shiver, do you think Aryan is the New Messiah?”

  “He certainly thinks he essentially is.” She replied noncommittally.

  "Well, If you truly believe you are servants of the Lord or the Kingdom of Heaven, how do you justify your slaughter of the children at the Wrighthouse?"

  “Mid-older adolescents are a tad different from innocent little children for starters. With puberty comes strength and desires both sexual and violent that are not so sweet. More importantly, they harmed others cruelly and knowingly. Don’t pretend you believe that nonsense that they have no agency due to their age, for the Lord would certainly see the darkness in their eyes. They watched unthinkable things in the virtual realm and understood quite well they were causing another pain, and distress, and leading them to possible ruination. I also strongly suspect, our pervert Ethan was a…Well, let’s just say the word starts with R. They all gleefully tormented a fellow classmate to death.”

  “How is Sally alive? The article mentioned no survivors besides you and Mist.”

  Shiver brightened.

  “She technically left the school too early. We wouldn’t have taken her like we did the others either way but she was already gone.”

  “What…about Ambrose…You tortured him too…”

  Shiver frowned: “he was going down a grave path. Monovalent predicted it. His death was divine intervention. Here.”

  She showed him a picture of a heavyset, young woman with black-brown curls. She had a shapeless roundness to her young face and slack-eyed, thick features, but she gazed quite joyously up from underneath the arm of a long, thin, gawky male. With a great, broad nose but also a friendly air, sweet, yellow lashes, and a well-painted brush of summery freckles. Light and almost golden.

  “Who is she?”

  She would have been Ambrose’s first true…I was going to say love but that would be inaccurate as he would treat her abominably. I should say girlfriend, but I hate the word; it is shallow, unromantic, and cold. Basically, she and Isabella would go on to torment her; with Isabella crowing over how Ambrose couldn’t get over her dear beauty whilst she kept him around simply to increase her ego-boosting harem of adoring suitors. Ambrose meanwhile would be making no secret of his pining while using this young girl’s body like a dishrag until she slit her own throat.”

  “Well, that is a ghastly way to put it…” Jacob muttered.

  “You pretty it up then? He wouldn't love her, this poor plain girl who was a substitute for the ones he truly wanted like me or Isabella bulldog, but he would have proclaimed he did through lying teeth. Gnashing teeth.”

  “So, this was a Monovalent prediction? Not an actual event that took place?”

  “Yes, and he is always right. Besides the relationship was already being hinted at before Ambrose’s timely death, and she had an infatuation with him. One Monovalent had predicted before she even showed up at the Wrighthouse that her brother attends. He dated both Ava and Isabella and is considerably more picture-esque than his sister. People find him quite handsome. He is also a little weasel who would have done nothing to protect her while he cheerfully and lustfully, man-harpooned her tormentor.”

  “Man-harpooned?” Jacob laughed at the absurdity. “Nice turn of phrase.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Why did she want Ambrose in the first place…He wasn’t exactly handsome or well-regraded..” his voice trailed off because it seemed both mean-spirited to say and possibly offending Shiver due to her once liking of him.

  “She is plump, plain, and dearly wanted to be loved and he promised her love with a least more eloquence than Ethan could. Saying ‘“You’re so attractive you don’t need a brain’” is about as far as romantic compliments or declarations of love go for him. Went for him.” A sly smile upended the corners of her lips.

  Jacob flinched. Her was confused and found himself staring into her eyes and for a minute he felt he could see the corners of sweetness her mother had mentioned were there…