Schism

memory implant in your head. We had to, well, break the news-so to speak-to Trevor.'

Nina's eye narrowed. She felt a shiver in her spine.

'And what? What do you know about all that?'

Maple smiled. He tried to appear confident and in control with that smile, but it came across as weak and unsure. Nonetheless he tried, shaking his head and saying, 'It would be treason, um, you see. Trevor said it would be treason to tell you anything about the times you, um, can't recall.' She ignored the irony in Maple speaking of treason and wrapped a fist around his collar. 'Listen, you had better-' 'Get me out of this! Get me out of this in one piece…protect me and I'll tell you.'

'Right now, you need protection from me. I want you to tell me-' A heavy clang interrupted the interrogation as the locking mechanism fell away. Knox, unaware of the conversation, turned off the torch and raised his goggles. 'That should do the trick,' he said. Nina stared at Maple for a long two seconds, and then released his collar as she turned her eyes to the coffin.

As the moment arrived, Nina found she did not want to gaze upon the rotting corpse of her beloved leader. It had been bad enough to view his perfectly preserved body as it lay in state more than a month ago. But to see the man she had admired rotting away…to see him as nothing more than an empty shell…that made her stomach ache.

Yet she could not avoid this duty. Based on Maple's confessions, she agreed with Knox that clues waited inside the Emperor's body.

She grabbed one end, Gordon the other. Together they lifted the heavy lid and dropped it to the floor.

Inside the coffin lay the body of Trevor Stone. His skin not decayed, not blotched, and not running but clean and clear without a blemish to be seen. His eyes closed peacefully, his hair combed perfectly, his strong hands still crossed across his chest.

'My God, Doctor,' Gordon spoke first. 'What the Hell did you use to embalm him?'

Maple swallowed hard and admitted, 'We didn't embalm him…'

…From each of the sick round spheres lying on the soft forest floor sprouted a trio of sharp and boney protrusions. They hinged at an unseen joint and returned to the ground, stabbing into the mush there. At the center of each creature rose a glowing orb alongside a fleshy cylinder that sat on a tendon-like shoulder.

The creatures-both of them-rose five feet in the air…

…Odin stood still between the two Dark Wolves commandos with his curly tail rigidly held aloft and the fur of his mane standing like porcupine prickles. A scent carried through the air to his snout; a scent of death and decay different from the cemetery's stench. He had not smelled that particular aroma in many years. Odin growled and turned his eyes toward the line of trees to their right. Something wicked approached……'I did not embalm the body. I was told only to stitch the wound.' The flashlight-propped on the casket-shined on the perfectly preserved remains of Trevor Stone. Nina insisted, 'Doctor, someone did something to him. I'm just saying, dead bodies don't hold up like this.'

Before she even finished, Gordon pulled a hunting knife and drew it across the dead man's tunic. The fabric tore, revealing somewhat scorched skin beneath a row of stitches running from his upper chest to his stomach.

'That's where the blast was,' Maple explained. 'A terrible wound. He was certainly hit by one of the alien energy rifles.'

'I see,' Gordon mumbled.

Nina acted on a hunch. She carefully reached toward the dead man's face and, after a moment of hesitation, lifted the eyelids. Two intact eyes with no sign of rot stared out with a glossy glimmer; the pupils dilated not too much, not too little. A soft gasp escaped her lips. Knox grabbed the bag in Maple's hand and shoved it against his chest. 'Cut him, Doctor.' 'I can't do a proper autopsy here. I can barely see!' 'I don't think you're going to have to dig very deep. Now cut him.'

The doctor did as instructed. He slipped on a pair of latex gloves then pulled a scalpel from his bag and went to work releasing the stitches. They snapped apart one after another. Nina curled her nose and sniffed the air. Her eyes danced around as her mind drew a conclusion. 'Do you smell that?' Her question pulled Knox from observing the doctor's work. 'Huh? What? Smell what?'

'That's what I mean,' she answered. 'Look, there should be a smell. He's cutting open the chest and there's no smell. No dead smell, no body smell. Nothing.'

'No,' Gordon corrected. 'There is a smell. Almost sweet. Not the smell of a dead body. Something different. Very strange.' Maple finished re-opening the wound and hesitated. 'Go ahead, doctor,' Knox said. 'Do your job.' Maple huffed and examined the contents of the corpse. He first bent back the perfectly intact rib cage.

'Interesting. These bones are…well they're almost rubbery. Not so much bone. More like tissue. There's also a lot of blood down here.'

Gordon said, 'You mean coagulated blood.'

'No, very much a liquid.'

Nina stood on her toes to peer over his shoulder but lost her nerve. Instead of watching she asked, 'Well? What do you see?' 'Internal organs,' Maple answered. 'No kidding,' she hissed. 'But do you see any problems?' 'The lungs, the liver, the heart, all are in perfect condition.'

Nina asked, 'I mean, do you see anything unusual?'

Knox repeated the doctor's words, 'Perfect condition.'

'Yes,' Maple's voice wavered, suspicious of his own conclusions. 'Perfect condition.'

'They shouldn't be in perfect condition, Doctor,' said Knox. 'They should be decomposing, rotting away. The blood should not be flowing around in there, it should be dried and dead. His eyes should be rolled, his skin sagging. Why isn't it, Doctor? Why?'

For a few moments, the doctor's professional curiosity swept aside his circumstance. He spoke as if he might be in a laboratory at work, studying a specimen.

'No rigor mortis. No decay. But yet…'

Knox pounced, 'What?'

'The organs. Everything is exactly where it should be. No settling. The body has not lost any cohesion. It's not right.'

Nina's eyes widened and she pushed herself between the doctor and Knox. She saw the carved open chest of the body that appeared to belong to Trevor Stone. In the hole there she saw globs of pink and splashes of red. She said, 'You're saying that this is not Trevor Stone.' 'What?' Maple gasped. 'It's a fake.' Knox scratched his chin and echoed, 'A fake? Interesting thought, Captain.' 'Impossible,' Maple decreed meekly. 'I mean, everything looks exactly as it should.'

'Yes,' Nina's mind buzzed. 'It's too perfect. Look, I mean, you said it yourself. All the organs are intact, there's no decay, it looks like a human body but it was never alive so it could not rot to begin with. This isn't Trevor Stone.'

The assumption left Knox befuddled, one of the few times in his life.

'That makes no sense. There's no logic to it. Evan assassinated Trevor Stone. What would he have to gain by a fake body?'

Maple stumbled, 'But who could do such a thing? This is not some sort of Hollywood special effect. These organs look exactly as they should; the glands, the blood vessels…everything is straight from a text book.'

'But never any life,' Nina knew the answer as if by instinct. 'Just a prop. Just enough so that if you didn't look too close you'd think he was dead. Listen, this changes everything.'

The grave robbers heard the sound of Odin barking fiercely…

…They came from the tree line, two monsters each with a yellow light for a face sitting at the nexus of three bony green legs. They moved forward methodically, closing toward the violated crypt.

Odin stood next to a marble angel and barked. Oliver and Carl raised their weapons. The creatures marched across the open as if unafraid of any human defense.

Nina and Gordon with Maple in tow burst out from the tomb, no longer concerned with the security trip wire. As they moved from the damp, cool confines of the grave and into the oppressive heat of the July night, the creatures began their attack.

A fleshy tube-like weapon alongside the glowing head fired from a clock-like face of holes, one after another. Deadly pellets sought out the three who exited the mausoleum. Nina pushed Maple to a sitting position behind a