Chapter 2: The Protector
Feeling vulnerable in a hospital gown, I sat down on one of the chairs. Two nurses in surgical masks appeared in the room. Without looking at me, they hurriedly performed the usual routine: took my blood, measured my pulse and blood pressure, swabbed the insides of my cheeks for DNA samples, put sensors on my temples and chest. Then they quietly disappeared. This whole thing was a performance, really. By the time the Disease can be detected under a microscope it's already too late. The real test comes after the nurses leave, and it's this part that I need to worry about.
The door opened, and a woman carrying a glass of water came in. She was in her early thirties, with dark hair and pale skin. Her clothes were, as always, practical and unassuming: mundane enough to fit in an office building, yet somehow stylish.
'Hello, zero six eleven. My name is Elizabeth.'
Her name wasn't really Elizabeth. Some wraiths allegedly have the ability to manipulate people's thoughts through neurolinguistics, and knowing a person's name makes it easier. For that reason Protectors never reveal their names, and any personal details in general, to their wards. The woman was my handler for the past three years, and each time we've met she invented a new name for herself. During the past few months, she was Marie, Annie and Laurel. What never changed was how she addressed me.
0611 is my PA number. My real name is Matthew, but she never uses it. Protectors have protocols against personalizing their wards, although few follow them so immaculately. From the first seconds of the test we were always unevenly matched: she knew my name but chose not to use it, and I couldn't call her by her real name even if I wanted to.
She knew almost everything about me, and yet I knew close to nothing about her. The Protector was elusive: her mercurial nature went farther than shifting names. She routinely changed accents and mannerisms. Sometimes she wrote with her right hand, and sometimes with her left. One time I've noticed a small silver cross hanging on a chain around her neck, the next time it was gone. Trying to put together small pieces of information I knew about her became a small obsession of mine, but it was futile. I knew nothing.
And yet I knew enough to wonder. What kind of a person would take this job? Every time she walked into a room with someone like me, she was putting her life in danger. An angry wraith could kill her in a hundred horrible ways, and there'll be no stopping them. Who would volunteer to face that? And who would be able to face death while remaining calm and pleasant, seemingly relaxed?
The answer I came up with was simple but unsettling. A cold-blooded killer would.
'Hello, Elizabeth.'
She put a glass of water in front of me and sat down. There was a black metal case at her side of the table. She opened it and pulled out several objects: a transparent plastic box with iron shavings inside, a small piece of stained glass, a stack of paper with printed text on it. An ordinary notebook and a ballpoint pen came last.
'How are you feeling today?'