Voidhunter Mythos: Faith Healer (Part 1)

The Voidhunter Mythos is a fantasy/sci-fi setting I've been working on steadily for the last several years. There will eventually be multiple books written from the perspective of this character, Sung Min-Joon, aka Angkor/Maru/Zealot/Oxpecker - a demon hunter and interdimensional assassin of Big Bad Evil things. Faith Healer is one of the short stories set in the VH Mythos.

Why do I seem to  write Korean male leads? Hector Park from Archemi was in fact based on this character, who predates him and is a far more complex (and much gayer/queerer) character than Hector is. But they share the same military background and essential sense of humor.

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A sultry, petrochem-scented night in the Brazilian jungle, and half the village of Tapajós had turned out to witness a miracle.

The true believers crowded the front of the tiny one-room church. They whispered prayers and crossed themselves, ran beads through their fingers, held Jesus-jar candles. Some of them touched the hem of my cassock as I swished by them on the way to the altar. There were only about a dozen of these, outnumbered three to one by the skeptics who filled the pews all the way back to the door. Crossed arms, eyes dark with exhaustion and suspicion. No praying, definitely no robe-touching. Devout or not, skeptical or not, most of the villagers still wore their factory uniforms to Mass. I looked out over a sea of blue coveralls stamped with a black Sigma on a white field. All of them branded as property of the State.

Despite the air of simmering expectancy, a hush fell over the crowd as I took my place at the altar. The night kicked off with a short Mass: a very short Mass, no longer than twenty minutes with no hymns or homily. There was the risk of police busting in and breaking things up, and I was just about as conspicuous as a religious figure could be in the Estado Integralista Brasileiro. A Camillian priest, in the full black cassock with the big red cross embroidered on the front. It made me feel like a range target, something I kept in the back of my mind as I prepared the sacrament, and watched the crowd part to admit the woman I'd come to see.

Marguerite Lopez Pereno was shrunken, each breath from her partly-open jaw bubbling and wheezing. Her body was somehow both tensely contorted and flaccid. A quick glance led me to an immediate diagnosis. She had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, more commonly known as ALS or Lou Gehrig's Disease. ALS caused loss of the motor neurons that control voluntary muscles. Respiratory failure would kill Marguerite within a year if left untreated, and it WOULD go untreated. In Buenos Aires, a Party member with her condition would have access to the best nanotech medicine in the world. Here in Tapajós, an industrial town wallowing in the polluted mud of the Amazon River about a hundred and fifty miles from the capital, all she had was me.

A teenage boy, maybe fifteen or so, pushed Marguerite's wheelchair to the base of the altar. I smiled at him, then at Marguerite, and stepped down so I was level with them both. The boy was as tall as me, six foot, but skinny with malnutrition. He had the jaded, pinched expression of a fifty year old man. Didn't smile back.

"Thank you for trusting me, both of you. I'm Father Kusanagi," I lied softly, looking between them both. "Marguerite: Are you both ready? It can be a little startling."

The boy crossed himself. His dark hands were already blotchy, scarred with chemical burns. "We are, Father."

I bowed my head to them, and took the communion wafer I'd blessed, holding it up in both hands. "Body of Christ."

"Ammn." Marguerite's face trembled with effort as she opened her mouth to recieve the host, shuddering with every small movement. Behind her, the small audience of devout Catholics vibrated with barely contained fervor. Candles and crosses were lifted. The less-religious people at the back of the room stared and waited, arms crossed over their chests.

I gave the woman a small sip of wine. Then I took Marguerite's hands in mine and bowed to them. I wasn't actually religious, but still... something profound was about to happen. Something intrinsically meaningful. The woman's eyes searched my face when I looked up again.

"It won't hurt. Don't worry," I said. "All you need to do is breathe, okay?"

She couldn't nod, but I saw the light of mingled curiosity, disbelief, and fear kindle in her deep brown eyes - followed by wonder, as I exerted a small amount of will and engaged my Gift.

The superficial appearance of this woman - mid fifties, obese from a life-time of poor quality state manufactured rations, her hair grey with stress - deepened and expanded as I hit my Lifesight. Suddenly, I could sense her muscles, atrophying. Her blood, low in iron. Her DNA, telomeres unravelling too fast, too early, destroyed by the stress of raising a family under a fascistic, militarized Brazil. A Brazil that dominated the world with the machines that had ruined Marguerite's village, her health, and - if left unchecked - this version of Earth.

The source of the disease was easy to find: moth-eaten neurons torn apart by the immune system supposed to protect them. I coaxed her immune system to back away. Under the gravity of my will, the inflammation ebbed. The gnawing stopped.

Marguerite's eyes widened. For the first time in a long time, she drew a deep breath.

A stifled gasp went up around the room from those who noticed, but I wasn't done yet. Energy flowed through my fingers and into Marguerite's body, soft as sunlight. The woman twitched and kicked in her seat as millions of nerves stirred in response, rippling with electric current. They began to re-myelinate and knit, frayed ends reforming into healthy receptors, clumps of amyloid protein unravelling and dissolving. The disease that had taken years, even decades to cripple her to the point she couldn't walk took mere minutes for me to eliminate. I burned the energy stored in her excess adipose tissue and used it for protein and lipid synthesis. And while I was in there, I corrected her metabolism, reversing some of the damage a lifetime of intensely sugary foods had done to her pancreas, blood insulin levels, and heart. I couldn't clear the plaques in her arteries via magic alone, but I could see them. I needed an operating theater to extract those. If I used magic to dislodge the plaques, I risked causing an infarction that could kill her on the spot. There were limits to miracle working, even for me.

Marguerite's son watched in slack-jawed astonishment as his mother took another deep, whooping breath - then coughed, hacking mucus that had sat in her lungs for too long. I took a handkerchief and held it to her face - then slowly let go of it. The woman unconsciously bought her hands up to hold it over her nose and mouth, and a chorus of cries rippled through the audience.

"My God." The boy behind the wheelchair took a step back from us both. "Oh my God."

Marguerite was the last to realize what she'd done. When she did, her hands fell away from her mouth. She gazed at them in astonishment, too shocked to even cry.

"There we go. But you need to be careful, okay?" I said. "The damage has been halted, but it's going to take months for your nerves to fully repair."

"This... this is impossible," she whispered.

"Everything is possible, Marguerite. All possibilities are equally real." Other than the healing itself, it was the most honest thing I'd said or done since entering the church. The rest of it - the Mass, my name, my status as a Catholic priest? All just a deep, deep cover. "Do you want to try and walk? You can probably take a few steps."

Before she could reply, I offered her a hand. Without thinking, she placed her work-worn fingers into my smooth-skinned surgeon's palm, and I pulled her to her feet. She wobbled... then stood.

At tacky megachurch-style revivals, this was where the signs would flash and people would start cheering and collapsing in fits of tongues. The people of Tapajós were simply stunned into silence. Everyone in the village knew Marguerite. Everyone had watched her decline from an energetic mother of four to a wheelchair bound Inútil: an invalid, someone the government no longer considered to be a 'human resource'. Her family had taken care of her as she'd lost the ability to feed herself, clothe herself, swallow her food properly. And here she was, standing.

Marguerite gazed into my eyes in disbelief.

"Come on. Take a step." I let go of her hand and moved back, motioning to her.

She looked back to her village with an expression that said: "Can you believe this guy?", but then took a step forward. And another. While she moved, I monitored her vital signs with my Lifesight. Her neurons were still healing, marrow churning with fresh stem cells my Biomancy was rapidly, efficiently converting into new nerves.

"My god!" She cried, staggering into my chest. She turned as I gently righted her. "My family! It worked! It worked!"

The crowd cheered, as Marguerite's son joined us. Embraced by his mother for the first time in five years, he began to sob. Before I knew it, the audience heaved up, clamoring toward the stage. Shouting, begging, adulating, praising God, praising miracles, praising ME...

"Comms to Oxpecker." A soft, deep voice purred through my radio, buzzing the eardrum of my right ear. "You've got incoming."

"Wait. What?!" I hissed back, turning slightly so the mosh pit of waving hands and crosses didn't see me appearing to talk to myself. "Where? How many? I literally just finished the first heal!"

"Someone must have been streaming it on a device. Integralist censors caught it. There's two teams of police closing in. Radio chatter suggests they'll looking to extract you."

"Fuck, Digger!" I hissed, turning back to the altar and feigning to pray so the crowd didn't see the ugly flushing of my cheeks. "Why didn't you... fuck! We need to get these people out of here!"

"No time. Brace for contact." Digger's voice was grim.