He woke up when the bus stopped at the New York terminal. He had made a long trip from Los Angeles and felt extremely exhausted. He took his backpack and got off the bus with the other passengers. Outside, he barely recognized where he was, after four years of being there at his friend’s house. He sighed deeply.
“We’re here, brother”, he said to himself in a low voice. “We’re already in your house.”
At the age of twelve David Cranston lost his family in a tragic car accident. Whiskey fan, his father had drunk a lot in a family reunion on a Sunday, and on the way home he fell asleep at the wheel. His father, mother and five-year-old sister died that day, and David began a long journey through adoptive homes in which he never felt comfortable, since he had no other relatives to whom the authorities could leave him in custody. His father had been the only child of a failed marriage which abruptly separated and they never met again. His mother, the only child of Irish immigrants, had come to the United States as a very young girl, and when her parents died she was also left alone, without close relatives. When he came of age, David chose to enlist in military service and try to make a career to stabilize himself a bit, since he didn’t had a job, only his family’s house, but it brought back memories of his childhood that in the end turned painful because of the lack of their loved ones. But that stability never came, since he had to serve in Afghanistan in the war against Al-Qaeda after September 11, 2001. The horrors of war hardened his soul to the point of blocking feelings, and not feel nearly no empathy for others. Only at night, when sometimes he dreamed of everything he had lived, was when he felt real pain in his soul, and the images of men, women and children mutilated or mangled everywhere by the effect of some bomb, attack or incursion against the group of Osama Bin Laden tormented him to the point of thinking about committing suicide so as not to feel that again. During his military service and before the armed conflict in Afghanistan, he had befriended a boy named Robert Moses, who, like him, has chosen to serve in one of the toughest branches of the US military: the Marines Corps. Robert was a somewhat withdrawn boy and seemed at first sight weak and sickly, and more than once David thought that he wasn’t going to finish the service given the hard training, but to his surprise the boy managed to adapt to the harsh regime and when they had established a true and strong friendship, arose the conflict in the middle East with Al Qaeda. David had achieved the rank of Sergeant. Both saw action on many occasions and were part of the search and elimination team for Osama Bin Laden, but in one of those searches they were ambushed in a network of intricate mountains where their target was supposedly located, and Robert was injured by bullet. The severity of the wound cost him his life, and David felt that an important part of him was gone with that boy, whom he loved as a brother and with whom he had shared a small but important part of his life. Before arriving in Afghanistan, Robert wrote a letter to his parents as a kind of farewell in case he couldn’t to return to his country, and made David promise that he would deliver it if he was the one who returned. He swore to himself that if he survived to that hell, he would be responsible for his family received that letter, and now he was there, almost two years later, about to fulfill his promise.
Robert’s family lived in Brooklyn and welcomed him very warmly. His friend’s mother threw her arms over his shoulder and wept inconsolably for a few minutes. The father was silent sitting on a sofa in a corner of the living room. Although David had chosen a long time ago not to feel pain again, contact with that woman barely penetrated his shell, and for the first time in more than a decade he felt desire to mourn, and two furtive tears rolled down his cheeks. After dinner, they talked at length about the military service anecdotes and the things that the apparently weak Robert had accomplished. David intentionally omitted the experience in Afghanistan because of how strong it had been, especially because it was there that his friend died. He could see in the faces of those two people the deep sadness they were living, especially because Robert was an only child, and had no opportunity given his youth to marry and have children, so loneliness was the only company left to those two beings who were his parents. Robert's mother was a retired teacher, and his father a retired scientist, who had tried through his many investigations to open some doors towards the cure of some genetic diseases such as Down syndrome or Tourette’s. David found it interesting that someone delved deep into the human being in search for cures for diseases, and so he let Robert’s father know. He was about to answer him when there was a knock on the door. The man sat up surprised that someone knocked at that time of night, and when he opened the door the figure of his friend greeted him nervously. He was accompanied by a boy of about five years old.
“Julius! What a surprise!” He said when he recognized him. “What do you do here at this time? Come in, man! Come in..!”
Dr. Julius Hansen rushed into the house with the boy.
“Sorry to showing up like this at this time, John, but I need your help.”
In the living room the woman went out to meet newcomers and greeted Dr. Hansen effusively.
“Hello, Margaret”, Hansen told her. “I apologize for coming like this unexpectedly, but I need your help with something very delicate.”
Margaret and John Moses invited them to sit down.
“Sure, man!” John said. “What we can do. Tell us what happens.”
Dr. Hansen looked at David suspiciously.
“Don’t worry”, John said again. “He is David Cranston, he is trustworthy. He is a friend of our son Robert and came to visit us.”
“I heard about Robert”, Hansen said. “I'm sorry.”
The doctor looked at Margaret, and then at the boy who accompanied him. She understood and sat up, addressing the boy.
“Hello, sweetheart”, she said. “What is your name?”
“Joseph”, the boy told her.
“He’s my son”, said Hansen.
Margaret and John looked at each other quickly. They knew his friend had never had a child.
“Why did this man call you Julius, Dad?” Joseph asked.
Hansen looked at his friend and then at Joseph.
“It’s a game, son”, he replied. “My friend is always calling me by all the names he knows.”
Hansen laughed nervously.
“You must be hungry, Joseph”, Margaret told him. “Do you want a glass of milk and cookies?”
The boy nodded. Margaret invited him to come into the kitchen, and he went after her. Once they were alone, Dr. Hansen turned to his friend.
“He doesn’t know my name is Julius. For him, I’m Andrew Farnsworth; it’s an identity that I bought years ago when I decided to leave the country.
“Oh!” John exclaimed, understanding.
“Do you remember the ‘assignment’ that I told you about what it had done to me, and I was going to carry out some years ago after achieving the cloning of human organs?”
John blinked a few seconds, remembering. Then he looked at his friend in amazement.
“Don’t tell me that…!”
“Yes, John. I managed to do it.”
“But, how...? It's not possible. You needed to have the DNA to carry it out.”
“Well, I did it, John…” Dr. Hansen’s face lit up for a few seconds. “I did it!”
He squeezed the hands of his friend, who was still undaunted by the revelation he was making to him at the time.
“And how did you get the DNA?”
“Those of the brotherhood, who call themselves The Second Coming, made it easy for me; I think it’s from a sudarium or something.”
“And the boy is ...?” John asked slowly.
“Yes!” Hansen replied. “It’s him! I have raised him all these years as my son, hiding him from everyone. I even moved to London. I decided to run away with him and with new identities when I realized that I couldn’t hand him over to those who commissioned him so I don’t know what they are going to do with him. But now they have managed to find me and I had no choice but to return here from England fleeing from them, to the wolf’s mouth. I really had nowhere to go. Even a kind of sect called "Brothers of the Averno", which I don’t know where it came from, found us, and gave me a very clear message.”
John leaned back in the old chair where he was sitting and looked at his friend, worried.
“If they really were able to locate you, the most sensible thing was that you had gone to another country than this one. Here they must be waiting for you.”
“Yes. I made that mistake in the middle of despair. You must help me hide him, John. If that brotherhood finds him, who knows what they will do with him. And the Brothers of the Averno told me through a phone call that they want to kill him.”
Having heard all of that, David sat up and said he was going to sleep to let them talk quietly. He left the living room and went to the kitchen to ask Margaret where he could sleep. He was amazed by everything he had heard but decided not to give it any importance. In the kitchen the woman was sitting at the table next to the boy, who ate cookies with milk. David looked at him and he could see his eyes despite the artificial lighting of the room. They were large and beautiful light brown eyes, which matched a round face, lips that without being big were fleshy, and a profiled nose. The hair was light brown in color; a bit long and fell in small waves on his forehead. David thought he was one of the many children he had seen in his life, but it must be very special for those two men that talk about him almost secretly. Margaret told him to go upstairs to Robert's room, and there he would get some clothes to change once he had bathed. So he did, he went up to the room, took a shower, changed his clothes and lay on the bed that once belonged to his dear friend. Thinking of him, he felt sadness again and fell asleep a few minutes later. It had been a long day.
Dr. Julius Hansen told his friend everything he had done to carry out the "assignment", which was to achieve a clone of Jesus of Nazareth. Of course, his first reaction when he was made the proposal was flatly refuse the idea, because human cloning is strictly prohibited, but his scientific curiosity and attraction to the unknown made him change his mind, and he agreed to do so secretly, thinking that he might not achieve his purpose because of the complex of the process and because had never been attempted before. For this, he needed to disguise his actions with those of an ethically possible research related to the topic. He told him that he obtained the support of his laboratory located in Berkeley, California, introducing to the board the beginning of a research related to the duplication or cloning of human organs, with the intention of eliminating those factors that cause somehow they fail or sick, and achieve transplant them to the affected patient, eliminating the damaged on
David awoke shortly before sunup. He had time he didn’t sleep so deeply. He got up and went to the bathroom, where he washed his face and brushed his teeth. A few minutes later he went down to the living room and found John sitting in front of the window with the shotgun resting on his thighs. He signaled him to be silent and invited him to look out the window. David immediately spotted a man standing at the end of the street and around the corner, seemingly waiting for something or someone.“He arrived about twenty minutes ago,” John said. “He hasn’t done anything else.”David looked at John, intrigued.“And why do you think that is suspicious?”“You didn’t finish listening to the conversation last night, son, and you don’t know that my friend and his son are in danger.”“Danger? I only heard something related to an assignment and a DNA. Unless it has something to do wit
John’s Dodge Charger was the four-door model. David was driving and beside him Dr. Hansen was watching the highway in silence. Joseph was lying in the back seat, asleep. It had long since they had taken the route to Manhattan, and approaching the Williamsburg Bridge on the East River. David couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened at John’s house, and no matter how hard he tried to justify himself, he couldn’t stop thinking about the man who had taken his life. Somehow he thought that war and death would no longer be part of his life, and there he was again, killing for a cause he still didn’t fully understand. All he knew was that if he hadn’t taken that man’s life, everyone, even himself, would be dead at that time. He thought of Joseph, and a small apex of consolation reached his soul when he thought that he had at least saved an innocent child from a death that according to that sinister man was certain. He looked at Dr. Hansen. He
John’s friends had a small antique shop on the corner of Delancey and Allen streets in Manhattan. They had no trouble getting the address, since it was near the Williamsburg Bridge, through which they had entered the district. At that time the store was already open and Dr. Hansen asked David to wait in the car with Joseph, who had already woken up. He entered and immediately a man about seventy years old met him with a wide smile. In the background, and behind a counter, an older woman was also near the cash register. On the other side of the store, an obese woman looked closely a porcelain figure that looked like a horse. “How can I help you, friend?” asked the man in a soft voice. “We have many old and interesting articles. Many have a particular history, if you like to follow me I would like to show you...” “I come from Dr. John Moses,” Hansen interrupted him. “I need your help.” The man, who had turned around thinking that the client would follow him, tu
After the incident with the concrete truck, Mark and Doris went back to the scientist’s house and looked for more neighbors who had witnessed the incident. An old woman told them that she had heard the gunshots and immediately looked out a window, and a few seconds later saw two men and a boy left the scientist’s house and boarded a car, leaving the scene in a hurried way.“Did you see what those men and the boy were like?” Doris asked her. “Were they white? Colored?”“They were all white,” the old woman said. “One of the men was younger than the other, and the boy was small, about four or five years old.”“You’re a good observer, and you also have a good memory,” Mark said. “Anything else you remember?”The old woman made a gesture of annoyance, it seemed that the words of that detective rather than praise, offended her.“I’m an old woman, detecti
One of the bullets had also reached the engine and it began to fail. They were still far from the airport. David took the next exit and found himself again in the suburbs of New York. Dr. Hansen looked upset, he needed to leave the country and things were getting complicated. David parked the car on a little busy street; he didn’t need to turn off the engine since it had done it only because of the failure.“We’ll need another car,” he said. “Do you have someone else to help you?”Dr. Hansen thought for a moment.“We can go back to Dr. Moses’ friends to see if they have one.”“Okay. We must go. I don’t know this city well. Are we close?Dr. Hansen glanced around. He knew the area.“We’re a little far, about seven blocks away.”“Then we must hurry.”They got out of the car and started up. New York was a big city; it took just over thi
The "Senile Brigade," as Henry jokingly told his friends, had left with those two guys in the trunk of a convertible Oldsmobile to teach them a lesson. Henry and his wife, Joanna, convinced Hansen a David to stay with them in their apartment to spend the night and continue on their way to the airport the next day. Hansen was worried that those who were persecuting them would also find them there, since they knew they had gone to the business of the elders and would soon find out where they lived to look for them there. Henry explained that there would be no problems there, since the apartment where they were was his daughter’s husband, and they had gone about five years ago to Argentina. Their home was located in Queens and, although they are living there permanently, that afternoon they had decided to go to their daughter's apartment precisely to avoid being located by those who were looking for them.But he was wrong, because they were able to locate them, but they we
When he heard the police were arrived, Thomas, who had stayed in the backseat of the car, knew that his men wouldn’t return, so he moved to the front seat, started the engine and drive away, passing next to the black Impala with police lights that had just arrived. He was starting to feel really frustrated that he couldn’t get to Joseph, and that was upsetting him too. Hansen had so far been very lucky to be able to evade him unharmed, and he would find a way to change that. He went back home, it was already night and he needed to communicate with his Lord, so he could tell him again where they would be the next day. He arrived at twenty minutes, a little faster than usual, he thought. Although it was located in Queens, he felt the place was the most convenient to live in than any other location. As a personal rule, his group would always be away from home, so he would avoid interruptions when talking with his Lord. It was located in a quiet and modest suburb, where all
Mark and Doris were chatting with David and Karen when the door of the safe house opened, giving way for Hansen and Joseph, the latter plunging into his mother’s arms. Karen kissed him repeatedly and asked how they had been with the President.“He’s a good man, but very serious”, Joseph told her. “He doesn’t want David to be with us.”“Why? David asked. “What did he say, doctor?”Hansen sighed disconsolate.“He said even though you were acting in self-defense, and in ours, you should be investigated for the deaths of those people. Like me, because of what I did.”“And what’s the President going to do?” Karen asked.“He’ll have the NYPD look after us until he decides what to do with us. He has a lot of pressure from The Vatican and Israel ...”“Pressure?” Mark interjected. “Why are they pressuring him?”
Joseph’s existence could no longer be hidden. The armed religious group in front of the One Police Plaza had brought to the fore the truth about the events of last few days, where many witnesses to Dr. Hansen’s words spread everything he had said on social media, and practically everyone knew a scientist had managed to clone Jesus of Nazareth, and religious groups and satanic sects had tried to kill the clone child, considering him an abomination or a threat to their existence and raison for being. In many cities of the world, groups of people gathered in public places, such as squares and avenues, and held vigils asking for the life of the child Jesus and for him to be presented to the world as their new Lord and Savior to follow him. Others, very small, continued to affirm Joseph was the product of the devil and considered he shouldn’t exist, because he violated God’s laws. The most cautious kept to the expectation of what might happen, arguing that God&rsq
Darwin Conrad was really angry when he called Darlene to her cell phone. He strongly reproached her for the advance she made on the event at the police station, where she raised the possibility that a clone of Jesus of Nazareth was involved. His bosses at CNN headquarters in Atlanta had called him about the "strange and confusing" report from the headquarters in New York, and were also concerned about the wave of rumors and speculative news were taking place throughout the country, as a result of the report. Darwin wasn’t used to questioning his reporters in front of their bosses, so he promised to investigate and delve deeper into the event and have a concrete answer before the end of the day, reassuring them at least for the moment. Now he had his star reporter on the phone and he was upset not so much by the fact she had said all this on the air, but because she didn’t wait for his order to do so.“Now you’re going to have to justify all what you sa
Thomas saw absolutely nothing. At the back of the room he began to make out two red dots were gradually appearing. He was glad his Lord came at that very moment, and he told him so, as the two points slowly approached him.“It’s time for a change”, his Lord said.Thomas didn’t understand, and began to sweat profusely. He felt enormous heat.“I don’t ... understand, my Lord ... What change?”The emergency lamp lights started flashing again, faulty. Thomas could better see the black shadow with two red dots in front of him. Strangely, it was becoming less dark, as if lightening, and taking the form of what appeared to be a man. Suddenly Thomas found himself in front of him: the shadow had taken his shape, and he began to feel fear. The other Thomas walked up to his side, put his left hand on his neck, and as if he were just a piece of paper he lifted him from the chair, holding him in front of him. Thomas began to c
David and the others had already entered New York followed by Mark and Doris. Mark gave them a lights change and David looked it in the rearview mirror; Mark was ordering him to stop. They pulled up to the side of the street and once he had got out of the car, Mark approached them.“You have no idea where to start looking, right?”David and the others shook their heads.“Some time ago we did a raid on a house where satanic rituals and things like that were performed. The house is closed, but one of the detainees lives nearby. We can start there, questioning him to tell us where the child could have been taken.”“And you think that man could have taken him to them?” Karen asked.“It’s most likely. If their own attempts failed more than once, they could turn to that man to do what they couldn’t.”“Okay”, said David. “Let’s go there.”“Follow
Darlene spent the night awake sorting out the information she had about the events and looking for any data or clues could tell her what was going on. She reviewed the names of the owners of the houses where the shootings had occurred and thought it would not hurt to search for some kind of information about them on the Internet. The first one to enter was, of course, the owner of the house the first event: John Moses. The first thing came up with his name was information from Facebook, and then a press release. Nothing else. The rest was information referring only to John’s first name or Moses’ last name, with no connection between them. She decided to read the press release. In it, an achievement obtained by Dr. Julius Hansen in the cloning of human organs was presented to the world, and the name of John Moses only came out as a part of the reference of one of the photographs of the event, as a close friend of Dr. Hansen. She thought about it for a moment: if the first
The three of them opened their eyes at the same time and the choking they felt made them take a long, deep breath. David sat up, panting from the sudden lack of oxygen, and saw in front of him fell the tip of a bullet. He looked around and recognized the hotel room. Hansen and Karen were also sitting on the floor with heavy breathing and wide eyes in surprise and fear. When he caught his breath a little, David remembered Joseph, and looked for him around desperately.“Where’s Joseph?” He asked. “Can’t you see him?”Hansen also recovered and got to his feet quickly. A sudden dizziness caused him stagger a little and he grabbed the railing of the balcony. He also looked for Joseph.“I don’t get it,” Karen said, seeing the two red spots on her blouse and starting to cry. “How is it possible?”Hansen walked over to her and helped her up. He looked at her eyes.“It’s Joseph,&r
Darlene arrived at the address Phil had given her. It was an old house in the suburbs of Queens. When she found that it was the house she was looking for, she knocked on the door. No one answered. She knocked again and also got no answer. When she was about to leave, discouraged, a man with long hair and thick mustache arrived to the house and looked at her suspiciously.“Who are you, and what do you want in my house?” Tommy asked her.Darlene feigned a friendly smile and held out her hand.“Hi! I’m Darlene Lowell from CNN. I’m looking for the owner, Tommy Sanders. Are you?”Tommy left her hand outstretched, walked past her, and went to open the door.“I have nothing to tell the press. Please go away.”“Are you Tommy Sanders? Look, I’m just investigating the murders occurred in the last few hours. The public has the right to know ...”“I don’t give a damn wh
They sighed with relief when they passed the checkpoint. Hansen hugged Joseph happily, and then Joseph threw his arms around Karen’s neck from behind her seat and kissed her on the cheek. David made the remark that they needed gasoline. A few miles later they found a gas station and stopped there. David began dispensing the Chevelle, while the others went to the store to see what they bought. They were hungry. Inside, the manager was behind the counter reading a newspaper. He barely glanced at them. Hansen and Karen took some chicken sandwiches and some sodas, as well as water bottles.“I don’t like to give him soda so early,” Hansen said, “but today we can make an exception.”Joseph went to a counter where there were several compact discs for sale. He reviewed some and recognized one of his father’s favorite groups. He took the disc and headed toward him, who was already paying what they had bought.“Can you buy t