Single Minded Purpose

Drawing a Blank

“How is she?” Seraph demanded, looking to the faces of his parents. He had run nearly all the way back to Sarah’s apartment after his encounter with Smith and a few of his clones and he was panting heavily.

“She’s resting now; that’s what she needs the most. What about you?” the Oracle asked, taking his hand in hers and examining it. The skin over his knuckles had burst and his nose was bleeding. She lightly fingered a bruise that was beginning to swell under his eye. She knew that she would have to repair the bruises on his body that he would have in a few days so that Sarah would not know that he even had them or how he acquired them in the first place. But first things first. She took him by the arm and sat down beside him on the sofa.

“Seraph, there is something your father and I have to tell you before you go to see her.”

Seraph swallowed and nodded. “Is it about Sarah?”

“Yes, son, it is. You see, I’ve erased her memories from the last few hours.”

“Everything?”

“No, not entirely. The last thing she will remember is falling to the floor after Smith slapped her, but nothing after that. And it is our intention that that is all she will remember. Only you, I, your father, and Smith will know what happened afterward.”

Seraph frowned. “But if he sees her again, won’t he tell her?” I can see Smith now, Seraph thought angrily—bragging to her, filling the gaps of her memory with all the sordid details that had been wiped from her mind so she will not be able to recall his assault on her.

“That’s where you come in. I want you to stay with Sarah from now on and prevent Smith from filling in the missing period of her memory. I know as well as you do that he will tell her the first opportunity he gets.”

The Oracle turned her head away and bit her lip from telling her son and protector about the life that was already growing inside of the belly of the badly injured woman Seraph loved in the other room. I have no right to keep this from you, she thought, but until I can rectify matters, I have no choice. Afterward, I will tell you everything but for now, it is best that you not know the truth.

“Can I stay with her until she wakes up?” Seraph asked, not questioning her about the strange look that had been in her eyes a moment ago.

“Only if you don’t wake her—the recuperative program I’ve installed will take a while to repair and restore her faculties to its normal parameters.”

“How long will that take?”

“About six or seven hours.”

Six or seven hours? Seraph thought, aghast. If I had known this earlier, I would’ve killed Smith instead of inflicting mostly superficial injuries on him. Smith was right—I now regret not killing him when I had the chance. Son of a bitch.

“Seraph, don’t even think about running off to find Smith again,” the Oracle warned. “Sarah needs you. I need you.” She took his hand and held it. “What would I do without you? Who would let me cheat at checkers if not you?”

She was encouraged when she saw him attempt a smile at her small joke, then just as quickly, the smile was gone.

“Oracle, what if Sarah becomes pregnant?” The thunderclap of silence that followed the question and the look on his mother’s face confirmed his worst fears. “Oh God,” he whispered, “She already is, isn’t she? Isn’t she?” Seraph took the Oracle by her shoulders and shook her hard. “Tell me!”

“Don’t talk to your mother that way,” the Architect demanded, extricating the Oracle from the iron grip of their son. “But to answer your question, yes, Sarah is pregnant. I’m sorry, Seraph,” he said with gruff gentleness.

Even though he already knew the answer to the question he was about to ask, Seraph asked anyway. “The child isn’t mine, is it?”

His parents did not answer and Seraph held his head in his hands. The Oracle put her arm around his shoulders.

“Look at me, Seraph,” she commanded but he would not raise his head to obey her. He couldn’t. “But I am going to change that. I couldn’t do it earlier because there were complications…” She hesitated for a moment and then told him everything—about how her intentions to change the paternity caused Smith’s child to threaten Sarah’s life so she would back off. “But, your father and I will find a way to rectify this matter, just you wait and see,” she finished, her voice filled with a confidence she was far from feeling.

The ramifications of what she had just told him caused Seraph to jerk his head up sharply. “Complications? The child was going to hurt its own mother so you wouldn’t proceed?”

The Oracle paused, and then resolutely decided that since her son had already guessed the truth, he deserved to know everything, risks and all. “Yes, and that’s why I’ve decided to wait until we can come up with some other strategy. Where are you going?” she asked, as she saw him rise from the sofa.

“I’m going to stay with Sarah for a while. I need time to think.”

He opened the door to Sarah’s bedroom and closed the door behind him silently so that she would not be disturbed. He sat down beside her and held her hand, watching the slow rise and fall of her chest as the repair program her mother installed to heal her damaged body and erase the horrible memories from her mind did its work. All of her primary functions excluding life support needed to be rebooted and each sub-program had to be restored, line by line. Small wonder it would take so long.

By examining her code, Seraph could see for himself how badly she had been injured internally and sorrow overtook him. You do not know it yet, but you are carrying the child of the monster who did this to you, he thought. Nevertheless, I will not allow the Oracle to change the paternity of your—our—child. I cannot risk losing you simply to salve my pride that the new life inside of you is not my own. You are far too weak to undergo anything else and that includes what the Oracle wishes to do. You will need all your strength for the efforts that you must make to make yourself healthy and strong again. And if what the Oracle said is true, the baby inside of you has already been able thwart her intentions even if it is only a few hours old. When it grows even stronger, what will it be able to do to you if it feels threatened again?

Our parents and I will be the only ones who will know the truth about who the child’s father is and that is the way it will remain. He watched over her for hours until his eyes grew heavy with the need for sleep. Seraph could feel each of the blows Smith’s copies delivered to his body and his muscles were beginning to ache. He heard the soft tread of his mother as she entered. She patted his shoulder reassuringly as she too looked at Sarah. “See? She is getting better. Slowly but surely she will mend. And now, you need your rest as well.”

Seraph didn’t argue with his mother’s wisdom. She is right, he thought. I have to repair the damage that Smith and his clones inflicted on me tonight. Otherwise, all Sarah will have to do is take one look at me to know something is wrong and the last she needs right now is to worry about me.

“Oracle?”

“What is it, son?”

When he turned to face her, she could see the exhaustion in his face, but she also saw resolution and determination written there as well. Being who she was, she already knew what he was going to say and waited to hear the words for herself.

Even though Sarah appeared to be sound asleep, there was no way to know if she could hear them or not and Seraph was not going to take any chances. Seraph waited until the door was closed behind them and they were well out of earshot of Sarah before continuing.

“Do not change anything in Sarah, all right? Let her think the child is mine,” he said. He looked into his mother’s eyes and they understood one another.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes. Sarah has been through enough. Let her rest. We will raise it together and I will love it as if it were my own.”

“What if Smith finds out and comes to claim either Sarah or the child? Have you considered that? Remember how far he went to find Bronwyn and her baby? He made her and Jones’ life a living hell once he discovered where they were. And do you remember how he found them in the first place—it was because of the powerful subconscious connection he had with his unborn daughter. Think about this, Seraph: this time, his child is inside a program, not a human. The bond between them will be even stronger. It’s still not too late to change things; will you promise me to think about it at least?”

“At what cost, Mother? Sarah’s very life, if you fail?” Seraph snapped.

“We don’t know that for sure. Just give us some time to find a way.”

“Well, I don’t want to take that chance. I can’t…no, I won’t lose her and that’s final. Oracle?” Seraph asked, turning toward her once more. “In time, will she be able to have more children?”

The Oracle sighed. “It’s too soon to tell, Seraph. I’m sorry. Let’s deal with the present before worrying about the future.”

lllll

Unbeknownst to those who loved and were concerned for her, a memory was beginning to awaken in Sarah’s deep sub-conscious…

Her knees began to hurt from their unrelenting contact with her hardwood floor. It was a toss up which hurt more—her knees or her hands which were bound tightly behind her. She tried to forget the painful throbbing between her legs; but at least this was a respite, of sorts. It would hurt even more if I were lying down, she reasoned with herself.

She looked up triumphantly at the copy who had made the error of getting his fingers too close to her mouth in tying his tie so that she could be gagged. Sarah had bided her time until his fingers touched her lips inadvertently and she seized her moment, biting down as hard as she could on his digits causing him to utter several choice expletives and slap her hard across her face in retaliation.

“What do we do now?” he asked, shaking his hand to ease the pain in his fingers.

The clone that seemed to be in charge looked down at the woman at his feet and smirked. “Since she wants to have something in her mouth so badly, I think we can oblige her.” He smiled wickedly at his companions and they understood one another and chuckled malevolently in unison. He reached into his sidearm holster on his left side and drew out his formidable Desert Eagle. At the same time, yanking Sarah by her hair so that he could look her in the eyes.

“You can’t hurt me,” Sarah said contemptuously. “Smith didn’t give you permission.”

“Oh, I’m not going to shoot you, I’m just going to teach you a lesson.” He put the barrel of the gun against her lips, but Sarah would not open her mouth. “Take this in your mouth or I will break all of your goddamn teeth if I have to.”

After taking a look at the expression in his eyes, she acquiesced, grimacing at the taste of cold hard steel as it entered her mouth.

“That’s it,” the clone crooned softly, “take it all in.”

She started to gag as he buried the entire length of the muzzle in her mouth. With her hands still tied behind her back and another of Smith’s copies standing behind her and holding her head steady between his hands, there was no way that she could fight back. The clone in front of her thrust the gun into her mouth repeatedly, inserting and withdrawing it in a gruesome parody of the act of intercourse.

Her eyes opened in time to see his finger tighten on the trigger. He is getting ready to shoot me! Horrified, she felt the steel became warm and pliable like flesh—hard and smooth--inside her mouth.

Oh my God, she thought, it is no longer his gun, it is his…no! In another moment, she felt a rush of thick, hot salty liquid surge from his member and flow deep into her oral cavity, followed by the harsh laughter of the copies that bore the face of the man she hated more than any other….

Sarah’s eyes flew open and immediately the feeling of gagging and choking churned through her stomach. Knowing without question that she would not be able to make it to the bathroom before becoming sick, she leaned over the side of her bed and vomited onto the floor. For what seemed like an eternity, Sarah threw up the contents of her stomach until there was nothing left but dry heaves.

Exhausted from her efforts, she fell back onto her bed, trying to ignore the smell of her vomit and focus her mind on something else. What woke me up was the feeling that something warm yet hard had been forced into my mouth and down my throat until I felt like I was going to choke—what started out to be his gun somehow morphed into his penis. She shuddered.

Hazy, disjointed images from her nightmare drifted before her eyes like a thick fog—of being struck on the head and then pain as she was forced to…what? What was I being forced to do, she thought, why was I feeling such pain? What was being done to me?

Try as she might, she could delve no further into her subconscious. To hell with it. It was just a stupid dream and I have more important things to worry about—namely, taking a shower and then cleaning up the mess I made, in that order.

When she stepped into her living room, she was surprised to see her parents and Seraph waiting for her.

“What are you all doing here?” Sarah asked, pleased but surprised. She winced slightly from the strength of the embrace Seraph gave her and she returned it as best she could, not seeing the look her visitors exchanged with one another behind her back. So far, so good, it said.

“We wanted to see if you were all right, Sarah,” her mother said, embracing her in her turn. “Do you remember anything from yesterday?”

“Yesterday?” Sarah frowned as she realized that her memories were like her dream—unfocused, disorganized, and made her head hurt the more she tried to remember. “Not really; I’m kind of drawing a blank. Why? What happened?”

“Smith hit you yesterday afternoon and you blacked out,” Seraph said quietly. He was glad that Sarah was not looking at him for if she had been, she would have known immediately that he was lying. Even when we were growing up, she could always tell when I was not telling the truth, he thought to himself. I hate this deception that Mother, Father and I have had to perpetrate on her about the events from yesterday, but we have no choice. Sarah must never know.

“How is it possible that I’ve been unconscious until now?”

“You are forgetting that he still has his agent strength, Sarah,” the Oracle interjected gently. “He can punch through a brick wall as easily as if it were made of foam. It would take very little effort on his part to hurt you as badly as he did.”

“But why did he hit me in the first place? Never mind,” she said quickly, as she saw Seraph about to answer her question. “I don’t want to know,” Sarah said angrily. “All I want to do right now is take a shower and forget the whole thing.” Like that’s going to be difficult, she thought, when I can’t remember a damn thing anyway.

“We’ll come by later and see how you’re doing,” the Oracle said, kissing her. You are almost as good as new, she thought as she examined her daughter’s code and her eyes met those of the Architect as he, too, gave Sarah a peck on the cheek. Sarah tried to conceal her astonishment at this completely unheard of display of affection from her father, but the Oracle saw the look on her face. Damn old fool nearly ruined everything. She looked over the rim of her spectacles and frowned at him.

Filling up the bathtub, Sarah sat in the water hugging her knees. What haven’t they told me about Smith? I should have known something was wrong; Father has never, ever, shown me much affection and out of the blue, he kisses me on the cheek. Something is definitely going on here, Sarah thought, but what are they not telling me? Did Smith do more to me than what they’re saying? What are they hiding?

Her head started to hurt the more she tried to force herself to remember, and the pain increased. Okay, okay, I get the point, she told herself crossly.

What Sarah did not know was that her body remembered all the things that had been done to it during those hours that she was being violated and delayed sensory reaction covered her like a blanket of ice, causing her to shiver and shake uncontrollably. Even with the tap turned to full hot, she wasn’t able to feel warm again.

I can’t stay in this damn tub forever, she admonished herself and made a gargantuan effort to haul herself out. She stood for a long time in front of the mirror that hung on the back of the bathroom door, examining her nude form with a discriminating eye. She did not find what she had been looking for—bruises or any discolourations on her body that could be used to justify the overly solicitous treatment she had received from her parents and Seraph when she came out of her bedroom.

The Oracle’s program had eliminated all of the internal and external damage done by Smith’s clones as they held her down and exacted the revenge their creator had ordered performed on Sarah. With particular attention, she examined her face, shoulders and neck for any sign of a blow from a man who retained his agent strength, but the Oracle had foreseen her intentions and wiped any trace of violence away, leaving her skin flawless and light, just as it always had been.

I am still so thin, she thought glumly, running her hands over her breasts and over the slight curve of her slender hips. My breasts seem to be a little bigger, and I’m getting a bit of a paunch around my belly, but other than that, there is nothing out of the ordinary here. I am still the same old skinny Sarah I always was. She winced as she felt a fresh quiver of nausea, but she swallowed cautiously and forced herself to breathe deeply and eventually the feeling passed.

When she came out of the bathroom, her parents were gone and she was alone with Seraph. He was at her kitchen table sitting with his elbows on the table and his head between his palms. Thinking she could cheer him up, she crept up behind him and put her arm across his chest, bringing her cheek next to his.

When he didn’t respond, she nibbled his ear affectionately, knowing since their childhood that that was a sensitive area to the touch. It was only during their intimate encounter however, that she discovered it stimulated and aroused him as well. He flinched when she ran her tongue along and around the convolutions of his ear and it took a lot of self-control for Seraph not to take Sarah in his arms when her warm, moist mouth began tracing the line of his jaw.

“No Sarah, don’t,” he said hoarsely.

“Why not?” she asked coyly, her small hands slipping around his neck as she manoeuvred herself so that she was sitting on his lap, “there’s no one to see; Mother and Father have left, remember?”

“I know,” Seraph whispered, as he felt himself respond to the nearness of Sarah’s warm and still damp body. Everything that was masculine within him wanted to feel her skin under him, around him, but he did not dare. Sarah, if you only knew what had been done to you less than 24 hours ago, you would be hiding under the covers of your bed, knees drawn tightly up to your chin to protect and shield yourself from the gaze—and touch—of any man, even me.

Just by looking at you, I can tell that the Oracle’s program did its work—you are restored, rejuvenated, and back to your normal self, but I cannot and will not allow my baser needs to shatter your recovery by using your body the same way he did. There will be a time for us to become intimate again, but that time is not now. Gently, he disentangled her arms from around his neck.

“What’s wrong?” Sarah asked.

“Nothing; I just don’t want to, that’s all,” he mumbled and Seraph had to turn his eyes away so Sarah could not see that he was lying to her. No woman wants to be told that the man she loves doesn’t want to be with her and Sarah was no different from her human sisters in that respect. Still, she tried to convince him otherwise by placing her mouth over his and kissing him, while her hand was occupied with stroking his member through his trousers. She felt it harden completely under her touch and she smiled to herself. You may think you do not wish to make love to me, Seraph, but your body is telling me something completely different.

“Sarah, I SAID NO!” Seraph said firmly, pushing her to the floor in his haste to get her too-tempting body away from his before anything else she did threatened his tenuous hold on what little self-control he still had left. Sarah landed on her bottom on the floor and gaped at him, her lower lip trembling as she tried to contain all the hurt she was feeling from his rebuff of her attentions.

“Fine!” she shouted, and rejected any attempt on his part to help her to her feet. “I can get up by myself,” she snapped. With as much dignity as she could muster, she got up and stalked to her bedroom, her head held high. As soon as she heard the door behind her close, she fell on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping.

lllll

Seraph listened to her tears from the other side of the door and cursed his helplessness to rectify the situation and ease her pain. “I had no choice; I’m sorry,” he said, sotto voce. Perhaps someday I will be able to make you understand that I had to do it and ask for your forgiveness, but for now, I am forced to let you think that I am a unfeeling, cold-hearted bastard when all I want now is to take you in my arms and love you the way you wanted.