My black eye blooms large overhead, rising involuntarily and burning back at me in the line's reflection. The rage is so cold, built of my old madness, rising off the memory of a man called Amo. He's just a bundle of pain and loss now, left behind but always there. The cold has split us apart, but still his rage towers over all.
The light on the rock wakes the black eye, and up it climbs, flattening the signal before it, and I have no choice but to listen as it speaks. Justice, it says. Up ahead. Another few steps. Another few miles. Justice waits.
* * *
It's not a rock, but a long building of dark glass rising from a pale cement base, with a slim glass tower rising from its southern edge like a land-locked lighthouse. It looks for all the world like some high-tech office park plucked out of Silicon Valley, except for the mottled layering of blue-ish ice coating it, obscuring any detail.
Around it lies an empty expanse of flat snow; probably once a parking lot or a security perimeter. There are no signs announcing what it is, or if there are, they've been obscured by years of creeping ice. At the top of the tower the yellow light shines toward me, and with it the signal pours out, and I know what it is now.
A shield.
But it's not like any shield I've felt before, nor is it the source of the signal I've been feeling for weeks. It's one thread only.
I advance slowly over the hard crust of white, my skis scraping loudly in the wind-blown silence. Overhead the Northern Lights ripple like a welcome mat. I approach the crusted snow near the front, where it looks most like a church, but there are no doors apparent. I unclip my skis and toe the ground, but the snow here is packed solid, probably harder than stone. I'll never burrow down even to the topmost door arch, not without a pneumatic drill.
I stand and look around myself. Standing in the building's shadow, the Siberian wind has cut out briefly, and I prize my goggles off my face, tuck the muffler under my chin and slide back my heavy parka hood. It's at least minus thirty degrees here, but without the wind it's not so bad, and I can probably go without my hood for five minutes before my nose starts to freeze.
I touch the structure's frozen side, and peer in through the thick skin of ice, but it's too dark inside, distorted by the ice. Maybe a hallway, or a lobby; I can't be clear.
I look up at the tower, to where the light shows now only in the flakes of snow caught in its beam. My nostrils chafe at the freezing air, and I lift the muffler again. In a minute I'll have to cover my eyes too with the goggles, but I want to take this in.
There's something special here.
I unhook from my sled, strap a pair of ice crampons onto my boots, and start around the structure. It takes fifteen minutes to circle it, and at no point are there any doors or open windows. Frequently I peer through the ice, but get no more clarity than a poorly sliced fragment of the T4 virus seen through a conventional microscope; just blurs and runny smears that I could paint any kind of meaning onto.
Back beneath the tower, I rummage in the sled for my pick. With my goggles back in place to protect me from ice chips, and my hood up to seal in the heat, I heft the glinting metal back, then bring it forward.
CHONK
The impact rings up my arms and into my crippled shoulder so painfully that I have to drop the pick. For all that, I've barely knocked a chip out of the ice.
From the sled I get more layers and wrap them round my gloves to deaden the impact, then I take up the pick, heft it over my shoulder, and hit the ice again.
2. ALPHA STATION
It takes hours, bashing out a chip of ice at a time. It's not so different from walking over the tundra. I drop into a calm, near-comatose state of focus, driving the pick in and in and in.
When the metal first breaks through the glass, there's a sigh of gas from within, as though the interior was hermetically sealed. I suppose it has been, by ice. Over a decade of freeze-thaw cycles, beaten by the sun. God knows what kind of toxins are in this air.
I step back while the wind whistles out, and swing the pick again.
CHONK
CRASH
The pane smashes inward, a plate of glass as big as a trash can lid. Air puffs out in a last gulp that is swallowed by the cold winds, and I lean in to see.
It's a lobby. I cup my eyes to cut the snow's white glare, adjusting to the darkness inside. It's like peering beneath the surface of a lake. The floor is a dusty dark tile perhaps two yards down, where maroon seating runs along the wall, flanked by wiry, dead potted plants. The ceiling is high, making a generous, glamorous lobby that stretches some hundred yards to the far wall. Below and to the right there's the main entrance door, a large revolving glass affair, buried beneath the level of the ice, and to the left there's a row of electronic security gates with a large airport-style walkthrough metal detector.
I almost laugh.
It's like I'm back in the Valley, wandering the headquarters of various Hollywood studios looking for a decent copy of Ragnarok III. But I only need to pull my head back to return to frozen Russia. Reality goes slick and fluid and I almost fall through the gap. Did I bring my security pass? Have I brought coffee for the team? What floor was my interview on again?
I cackle, then slap myself in the face. There's no pain with the muffler covering my cheeks, but there's a jolt. I need to pull myself together. I back away from the entrance and try to get a read on what's happening. My thoughts feel slimy, like they've been deep-fried, and I can't catch onto any of them.
The signal is changing?
I feel it slipping into my thoughts like a subtle blade, poking here, prodding there, making me crazy. The moment I cracked the glass it started, and now it's threatening to scramble my brains like an egg.
Was it, what?
I-
I turn round for a slippery few minutes, feeling it threaten to pull me down. In the ice I see my own body reflected like distortions in a funhouse mirror. I laugh, and my face splinters. My breath goes ragged and I stop trying to map the contours of what is happening to me. I try not to think of the terror lurking just beneath the surface.
Instead I focus on one thing: the rage.
I'm good at this. I've been doing it for weeks. I focus on the list of deaths, repeating each one like a puff of breath blown into the black eye, expanding a bubble of anger around me. I lash myself with the past, because fear is not a warning, it's a challenge, and haven't I already learned that a dozen times? Drake taught me well, and I think about his cracked-open head, about dead Feargal and traitor Arnst, about poor helpless Keeshom and everyone else I've killed, crying out for a reckoning.
It helps, but that help wilts when faced with the hole in the side of the building. I feel madness drawing me in, and know that the eye is no match for the chaos pouring off this place. It's like the leper in Istanbul, but stronger still, chopping up my thoughts and pulling out the plug, leaving me like I'm-
What did I-
Hope to be?
Another slap, ringing in my ears.
Still, I have to go in.
I duck back to my sled to get some gear, sucking in deep breaths as if that will help, then turn back and climb in.
It becomes a fall, and I flop down on the leather seating, sending echoes through that desolate space for the first time in God knows how long. The signal wallops me at full strength, like one of the worst twinges from my post-coma days hitting me square between the eyes, throwing me into a past of failure and dull books and slow, stilted conversations with my parents, croaked out in a whisper, so that-
I pull myself back into the present with a painful jerk, then writhe on the seat for a while, struggling for control. The signal is a cacophony in here and the black eye is barely keeping my head above water.
Feargal, I think, crushed and abused. The boy in the shield. Keeshom who did nothing but try to help others. Anna in Istanbul, looking up at me with some curdled kind of disappointed rage…
The black eye sputters outward, and I lurch forward into the space it buys me
. There's a flashlight somewhere, in my pocket, and I lift it. A gun too. I sweep them across the dark, dusty space.
"Hello?" I call.
The bright light beam picks out more maroon seating, more dead potted plants, and framed posters hung on the walls. One looks like a cell dividing, another like a schematic of the brain. The security gates are unmanned, the bank of elevators lying beyond are shuttered.
"Anyone?" I mutter, and lurch forward.
I hit the reception desk hard on my hip. There's a corporate logo on the wall behind it; the letters squirm and dance.
ALPHA STATION – MULTICAMERAL ARRAY
My thoughts turn with a glacial slowness. Alpha may mean more stations than this? I make weak guesses at 'Multicameral', drawing on what I know of the mind from Mecklarin's pop psychology books. The mind is bicameral, he said, two parts of the brain that together make…
Make-
So, multicameral?
A shudder trickles down my back.
I catch myself staggering out into the open space of the lobby. The air is full of dust kicked up by my own passage, then I'm on my knees while the twinge bears me down.
All a mistake. I start laughing, and lift the gun to my head. I'm not thinking, not doing, but it happens and it's hilarious, and maybe none of this is even real! I draw love hearts in the dust with the tip of the flashlight, humming a tune I don't recognize, while counting down from ten.
BANG
BANG
I shoot the gun but miss my head. It doesn't feel real, and maybe it isn't. Maybe I'm already lying in the snow outside surrounded by dead animals, dreaming this while I freeze to death.
"Stop it," I mutter to myself, more afraid than I am angry, more amused than I am worried. "Stop it."
The black eye is flagging. I feel it dropping away from me like pieces of skin unraveling. This is me, my anger, and my rage. Justice is not enough, I suppose. Anger won't cut it. I need…
I look at my love hearts and giggle. Love!
I think of Lara, my Lara, but no rush of sanity comes welling up from within, no conquering of the signal by the power of love. It makes me laugh more, and I drool wickedly everywhere.
BANG
The gun goes again, this time so close that the recoil smacks me in the cheek.
What the hell is going on?
Did I just shout 'What the hell is going on?'?
"What the hell is going on?"
I shout it to be sure. I kick my legs, spinning a circle into the dust, like a snow angel, like Homer Simpson walking himself round in circles.
Not enough. I wheel through the possibilities, but not revenge, not love, not justice, not righteousness, not madness, not the twinge, not my Lara, not-
"Get up."
I roll and giggle and look, and there he is. I give him a big old laugh, standing spectral and serious in the darkness.
Old Shark-eyes. Geoffrey Marshall. My old nemesis.
"Shark-eyes," I say.
He grimaces down at me. I've let him down. I'm a disappointment, and that's only to be expected.
"I didn't die for this. For you to giggle to yourself until you shit and die."
I giggle at that.
"Shit and die?"
"Shoot and die, you idiot. Just shoot yourself in the head and be done with it."
I put the gun to my head. This is familiar, I've been here before.
"Shoot," he says. "For Arnst. That bastard wanted it. Imagine what he would have done to your Lara, if you'd let him. Think of that while you snigger."
I hold for a second. My finger strains on the trigger. Shit, I want to pull it and hit home again. My spine, I guess. I want it. But-
"What?" I say.
"Kill Lara," he says. He barks. Maybe he's saluting. It's not a dance. It's a march. He's standing still. The signal is playing havoc with his reception. "Or Drake. Have you any idea what's happening to her, right now?"
I frown, because what does shark-eyes know about Lara?
"You tried to kill me."
"And I failed! Discipline didn't help me, but it can help you. Only discipline about the right things."
I get angry and point the gun at him. It's so frustrating. I feel like a child, lying in the dust. "What things?"
"Like what Janine Witzgenstein is doing to your wife. Listen to me, little man, pay attention, open your eyes and remember what you're doing here. What did you kill me for, and all those other innocent people? Don't lose track of that now. It's all that you have."
His words echo. He sputters and starts to fade.
"Shark-eyes," I call.
"Don't be a –" I strain for his last words, but they come slow, so slowly stretched out. I think the last word is 'fool'.
Then he's gone, but it gets me thinking on a new track, a parallel track that isn't justice or revenge or even love, with all my squiggly dust-hearts erased now, but something different and deeper.
It's why I did all this. Why I lashed Arnst in the dust, and beat Feargal, and killed hundreds and thousands, not because I'm cruel or want the power or even for justice or revenge but because-
I strain toward it.
For the weak people. For my weak people, and my children and my friends and my family.
To save them.
It's why I started this whole thing. I giggle and sob. I started off clean, I promise! I wanted to do good things, to help other people, not to kill them, not to break them, but to save them.
When I get hold of that, and chew it like a bit of rubbery steak, the black eye gets thick. The chaos backs right up.
And I stand.
I'm not giggling any more. Shark-eyes is gone. I wipe drool from my chin and look around.
It's all still there. It's beating at my shell now, hammering picks into my resolve, but I have time. Shark-eyes gave it to me.
I move fast, thinking clearly again.
I scan the reception desk; in the shadows lie a keyboard, a mouse, a large monitor and a pen set at perfect gaps apart, as if they've been aligned with a ruler, but the computer has no power and there's nothing in the drawers. Midway through checking I stop, because this is not important.
The signal is important. The source, the shield, that's what I'm here for.
I stride through air as thick as mud to the security gates, which remain closed so I roll smoothly over them. The metal detector doesn't blink as I pass through, though the signal intensifies again, briefly dropping me to my knees.
Then I'm up and at the elevators. There's no power so I set to work with a crowbar from my pack to lever open the silver doors. Inside the flashlight illuminates mirrored walls and four buttons on the control plate:
-1
1
2
Tower
It's near now, I can feel it playing with my sense of perspective. Vertigo strikes and I lurch sideways into the wall. I feel drunk. My mouth goes dry, I'm losing control, but I don't need much to punch out the access hatch in the ceiling. Pulling myself up through it helps; like I'm running along a balance beam rather than edging across step by step. The friction of speed will help me stay upright. The thought of Lara and Witzgenstein spurs me onward.
The shaft is dark and towering, like all elevator shafts before it, but screw this place. I let violence take a hold of me, and snatch onto the recessed ladder rungs set into the wall, climbing like I'm stamping on Ocean skulls. Ten rungs up I think I hear some kind of noise, and react.
BANG BANG
The pistol recoil feels damn good, and the sound it makes is deafening. Why did I fire? I don't know. From above there's a metallic PING and a crunch, then I feel one of the bullets whip past me and down to PING off the elevator top below. I squeeze the pistol grip so hard it hurts.
"Come on!" I shout up into the dark. "Come for me, let's go!"
It feels great, this defiance. It drives the thick soup of the signal, even now trying to steal back into my ears and between my lips, a little further away.
BANG BANG
I shoot at nothing again and there are more PINGs. I jam the gun into its holster and fly up the rungs in a rage. They think they can do this to me? They think scaring me in a goddamned elevator shaft is going to have some kind of effect?
"You'll have to do better than that!" I yell, driving the black eye up ahead, clearing my way. Another seven rungs and I'm at the next floor, where the metal doors are sealed tightly in the darkness. I jam the crowbar in between them and wrench open a gap.
Light pours in through the narrow crack, and along with it a staggering punch on the line. I almost lose my grip and fall. Even dreams of protecting my people is nothing before this. I'm back in Screen 2 with Drake leaning over me, whispering mastery in my ear about how he's going to take away my wife and children and remake my world, and how much fun it's going to be, and I know there's nothing I can do. Again I'm standing atop a van in Times Square with a thousand dead bodies around me and the gun to my head, seconds away from pulling the trigger.
BANG
The pistol flashes in the darkness, suffusing my face with a salty exhalation of spent gunpowder, cramming the noise of it into my ears and setting up a ringing tinnitus in its wake. I blink and find myself barely hanging from the rungs by one hand, with the gun still pressed close to my head.
What the-
The flashlight weaves crazily round the shaft from its place in my breast pocket, though there's plenty of icy blue light pouring in through the narrow gap in the doors now. My head rings and I feel a trickle of what must be blood run down my jawline.
Did I just shoot myself in the head? Again?
I rip a glove off with my teeth, too shell-shocked to be much slowed by the line, and run my fingers up over a tight, hot furrow along my right temple. The skin has torn, blood is leaking out, and I laugh.
I did. Goddamn. But I do feel clearer.
"It's not that easy!" I yell up into the shaft. I yell it through the gap. "I'm not that easy any more!"
I tuck the glove into a pocket and press my face to the gap in the doors, but all I can make out beyond is a metal walkway, a railing, and a bright white ceiling that looks to be made out of sky. I force laughter out like barks, setting my body headlong into the stream of confusion spewing out from inside, and jam my left hand into the gap. The crowbar is gone, probably fallen down the shaft when I drew the gun.
The Last Mayor Box Set Page 168