A Dark Perfection

by James, Mark

  “Why a twin?” Jack asked, trying to bring Présage back to the moment.

  Présage turned, “Well, a lone twin, as it were. The first production unit was destroyed. I destroyed it, in fact – a piece of theater art, that one. This satellite unit was constructed as the prototype backup, when actually, all along, it was a replacement. A stealth replacement, and unknown to Walker and that village idiot friend of yours.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jack challenged. “Josh would have caught on.”

  “Yes, one would think so, but Mr. Rendel is a practitioner of that daemon of computer geeks everywhere: two-dimensional thinking. I mean, Osborne never invited him to the White House for strategy sessions, right? Good at math, not so stellar at…anticipation.”

  “And so,” Jack said, now smiling himself, “Lani was getting too close – to you and this satellite. The ambassador in Paris, Major Grindel, the Aero-Con scientist in Florence – that was all you. But, why? Close to what?”

  Présage considered whether to disclose anything further. He looked at his watch – he still had time. He concluded that it really didn’t matter; the double helix of events was cascading towards its conclusion. There was no stopping it now.

  “Alright,” he said, “I’ll play along. Let’s see, in a general sense, the weapon needed tweaking. Its telemetry, you see, is a self-learning algorithm. As such, it needs killing events to perfect itself. I could have chosen any inanimate object as an initial target – a rock in Australia, a flower in Utah, it wouldn’t have mattered – but it was logical to choose what eventually would be its targets: humans, in their natural environment. And, of course, it was more fun. So, I chose test subjects that served my ends: the ambassador, a pompous ass that served to cycle the first algorithmic progression; that sweaty Army grunt, Grindel, because he was talking too loud and asking for too much, because the targeting pattern was more complex, cycling the algorithm further; and Anderson, that Aero-Con lackey, because he’d outlived his usefulness, because he’d developed a sudden conscience, because it allowed the final testing of the tag-targeting scheme.”

  “And Huff?”

  “Who?”

  “Daniel Huff. San Francisco. Nice family. No ties to any of this. Why him?”

  O’Neill and Keno’s proximity to Huff caught Présage by surprise. They’d circled closer than he was aware. It was quite impressive, in its own inconsequential way.

  The killer smiled, “Ah, Dan Huff. I’m afraid that was a personal choice, a gift to myself – little Danny Huff. Apart from that, it served to provide the final data points for the satellite’s gyroscope capability, enabling the acquisition of moving targets. Sometimes, former Special Agent O’Neill, there are many reasons for any given choice. I know this multi-relational reality is difficult for your limited cognitive faculties to grasp, but there you have it. Anyway, at the time it was simply easier to take you two off the field, put you and Keno on the run with that tie-in to the terrorist cell. A shuffling of money from here to there.”

  Jack ignored the taunts and pushed ahead. “And the symbols?”

  “Symbols?”

  “The ambassador and the Star of David. Major Grindel and the Christian cross. Daniel Huff and the Islamic crescent moon and star. All religious symbols.”

  Présage noted that O’Neill hadn’t come back to Lani. And he hadn’t risen to the bait on his own ascendency to the presidency. These were all poker tells in O’Neill, all inconsistencies in the flow. The killer had studied the interrogation tapes of O’Neill with Aisha, had studied his moves, his cadences, his omissions, as he would any opposing chess master. Sitting here, Présage had watched as O’Neill had attempted to mine for information, seeking delay, hoping for a change in circumstances. The hopeless hoping, he found it so…charming. He could muster a grudging respect for this adversary, like the feeling he’d have right before pulling the trigger on a dove, as the bird sensed his gaze and slanted too late.

  “The symbols? Hmmm,” Présage said, seemingly lost in his thoughts.

  He finally said, “I killed them with their own symbol. That seemed…appropriate. To be honest, it simply came to me. A nice touch, though – artistic. And then, of course, the choice became an inspired one as I watched you and your ever-effervescent mongrel consort, Ms. Keno, sniff for clues.”

  The killer didn’t know that the symbols had been a count down, his Dark Father branding the believers with the sign they thought could save them.

  As with many things, the symbols had come to the killer through the window of his subconscious, through the portal of his dreams.

  Dark winds, winds of light, we are all the carriers of winds.

  †

  Dr. Norbert chewed at his left thumb, the nail pulling away like an onion and starting to bleed. He’d chewed his fingernails since he was a child and favored the left, mimicking his mother, carrying the habit on.

  He was especially nervous today.

  He went over to the console to recheck that he had, in fact, been right. Each time he checked, it was the same – activated and locked into automated sequence. He picked up the phone – still dead.

  John Sizemore, the facilities’ maintenance manager, came through the lab doors as flustered as he was an hour ago. “Still no change,” he said, wiping his forehead with an oily towel. Normally, Sizemore wouldn’t be down in the oil, down in the engine room. But today he was there with all of the other repair technicians: down under the computer banks and into the mounds of wiring, searching for an answer.

  “The main program remains locked,” he continued. “I can’t say for sure, but I’m thinking it’s coming from outside. There’s a firewall virus program preventing us from entering and, well, that could’ve only originated from outside the mainframe logic gate. How long it’s been sitting in there, I don’t know. A Trojan Horse.”

  They heard the wind rattle at the picture window and turned. The storm was still churning, the worst they’d ever seen. They could feel cold drafts through the seams.

  They turned to each other.

  “The cats?” Norbert asked, referring to the all-terrain snow cats.

  Sizemore shook his head. “We’d never make it.”

  A thousand miles away and over a hundred miles above them, in the coldest of quiet, the Odin satellite began cycling through its own program array: visual, thermal, auditory.

  Odin’s state-of-the-art cameras looked down on the North American continent, blanketed by swirls as a nor’easter was being born, a convergence of three storms all the way from Africa.

  Odin’s eight eyes, compacted like a spider’s, switched to a lower vantage: Washington, D.C. and the eastern seaboard. Then lower: the grid-like tentacles of the D.C. streets spraying out from the hub like rays. And lower: the White House, the First Lady pulling up in her limousine, the agent opening the door, her auburn hair, a maroon red shoe.

  Odin’s auditory capabilities were the least perfected of its powers; its hearing sometimes clear, then just as suddenly the sounds shivering, scrambled by an intervening building or an atmospheric anomaly.

  In the vice-president’s office, Présage turned back to Jack, the thermal imaging of the satellite not able to see the entrancement in his eyes.

  “Who else is involved?” Jack demanded, static in the voice as Odin attempted to lock back in on the auditory environment.

  “Well, GMA Director Lucien won’t…” Présage said, cutting out.

  The thermal image of Présage moved from the window and sat in the desk chair, his arms extended over the laptop, itself glowing to Odin in a different color code. He typed in a command and stood.

  One of Odin’s other eyes had been holding steady on another image: of Lani in the hotel room, stationary; the easiest of targets.

  Jack looked away from Présage, focusing on the screen. At the far right edge, a red beam began to move slowly onto the sheets, stalking her in the dark hotel room like an asp.

  The auditory transmission snapped and Présage�
�s voice began again, “…the beam was designed to be clear, invisible. And it will be that way for the president later. But for you, now, I’ve adapted the program to red. Remember, it will sear until it reaches the point between her eyes…scarlet red…just for you…”

  The skyward eyes couldn’t see Présage laugh, nor perceive its meaning, nor feel Jack’s anger and frustration as he strained against the bindings. Nor could Odin see the question in Jack’s eyes – Why?

  The killer could feel the Cascade unwinding, winding back into itself.

  The transmission crackled. Jack yelled something unintelligible and Présage’s voice resumed. You could hear the smile in it.

  “Because, O’Neill, I’ve found one thing to be true: you can’t have a sacrifice without a sacrificial lamb…”

  45

  “We are not so different. We both seek our destinies. We claim what is ours.”

  “I claim nothing,” Jack growled, wishing he could get his hands around Présage’s neck.

  “Don’t you? You seek to incarcerate me, to place me within your control.” He circled around the chair, behind Jack. “You claim the freedom to seek me. Be clear, O’Neill, we all have our claims on this Earth.”

  The beam was on the opposite pillow, inching at a near imperceptible rate. Jack stared, unable to look away. He could feel Présage above and behind him, leaning closer as they both watched Lani on the screen.

  Présage shoved something in his mouth – wadding or cotton, then a gag and tape to hold it in place.

  He leaned closer and began in a near whisper, deep satisfaction in his voice, “And what will the world do when the Chinese premier is assassinated, his mind liquefied? And what will the world do when, two minutes later, a vein in the Spanish prime minister’s mind bursts at his temple? No one will be able to interpret these events as coincidences, particularly after the president falls from the podium in front of the entire world. There will be geopolitical chaos, creating a din far too loud for the world to hear the scientists screaming from the edges, from the far woods, screaming that something is wrong, so terribly wrong. No one will hear the Earth when she cries…”

  Jack looked up at the mention of the scientists. He didn’t know what Présage was talking about. He looked back to the screen. The beam was an inch closer.

  “That’s right,” Présage said, “you don’t know about Project Charybdis, do you? Charybdis is the modern lightning God, brought down as a fire within the Earth.”

  “Yes,” he continued at Jack’s ear, “Charybdis is the end-point, the point where a new beginning starts. First, there will be a 9.2 seismic event centered on the Dahlgren Biological Warfare Center, the lightning cracking the granite six floors down, beneath the most viciously created creatures the world has ever known; escaping like whispers of shadows, like angels from the Ark. The Cascade will then commence, a vast cycling, a rumbling through the Earth like the world has never known.”

  The beam was at her hair, strands breaking as it cut across the pillow. Jack searched rapidly through his options, even the ones he’d already rejected. Each returned as a cold negative. He looked at Lani’s face, so calm and unknowing of what was happening. And then it came over him, as if he’d always known: he loved her. He strained against the bindings with all of his strength, the nylon tape cutting deep into his wrists and blood seeping onto the chair rests.

  “Don’t fret so,” Présage smiled. “You’ll soon be joining her.”

  The killer walked back to the laptop and engaged the program that would next target Jack. He then set all of the programs to automatic-sequence, casually linking them like loops on a chain.

  He leaned back to watch Jack. It wasn’t Lani’s death he wanted to see. It was O’Neill’s face, his distorted face, at the moment when the beam terminated her life. Would O’Neill’s eyes be like Christ’s on the Cross as he looked up to the sky – Oh Lord, why hast thou forsaken me? Or, would they be like Lucien Freud’s – a silent scream at the nothingness in the world? The killer wanted to know this, to feel it, to see it in the depths of O’Neill’s eyes in that crystallized moment – that moment when he became bared to the bone.

  Next to Présage, a phone rang sharply, startling him. He looked at it for a moment, then recalled that he’d allowed only one caller through. He picked it up.

  On the other end, the vice-president was moaning.

  “Calm down, Mr. Vice-President. Repeat what you…”

  Jack could hear the wails from the other side.

  “Silence!” Présage yelled, breathing fire through the line.

  Présage was on the verge of a psychotic break, Jack was sure. They both were. If he could just get to that laptop while Présage remained distracted. Jack strained and the tape cut deeper. The chair creaked with the force.

  “You don’t understand,” the vice-president cried. “They know! They know! Everything – the GMA bugging and…and he’s dead, Lucien, that bastard, stabbed this morning, and the orbs that we hijacked and…”

  “Do they know about Odin?” Présage asked calmly.

  “No, no! But it doesn’t matter, they know about the rest, they know about Invisible Hand and…”

  Présage had no left fingerprints on Project Invisible Hand and had pushed the project onto Palmer, as it was irrelevant for his purposes.

  “And Charybdis?” the killer asked.

  “No, I’m telling you, no, only Invisible Hand! But it doesn’t matter, haven’t you been listening? They’re coming, the FBI, I just got a call from…that person we have at DOJ. They’ll be here in an hour. What’ll we do?”

  Jack could hear the muffled sobbing and observed Présage’s irritation. The blood had caused the tape’s adhesive to loosen and the bands were slipping back and forth at his wrists. They were still tight, but if he could just pull his hands through.

  “Alright,” Présage said, realizing that Palmer had become a liability, a final thread in need of cutting. “You’re at your private office, correct? I’m ten minutes away. Stay there. In the interim, calm down and call no one else. I have a solution.”

  Présage turned and opened a drawer, retrieving a small video camera. He set it up next to the screen and pointed it at Jack, activating it. He didn’t want to miss that look. Whether he was physically present for Lani’s death or not, O’Neill’s reaction would still be the same, no one could hide that.

  He opened another drawer and pulled out his Ruger handgun. He didn’t have time to be artistic with Palmer.

  While absorbed in the tasks, Présage hadn’t noticed the blood-wet tape. Standing and sensing something he paused for a moment and then walked over, smiling. “Now there,” he said, re-applying a new length, putting wash towels from the VP’s private bathroom between the new tape and the blood. “Solid effort, but I still need you to do something for me. With your eyes.”

  Jack struggled against the gag and the new tape as Présage walked over to the door and entered the security code. Présage knew, regrettably, that he would miss out on Lani’s death, but he was certain that he could be back in time to watch Odin work its dark magic on this O’Neill. Watching O’Neill’s death, it would then be as a sumptuous dessert to Keno’s own, and, at once, a sweet prelude as Gaia’s torture ensued.

  He closed the door and the office became eerily silent. Jack stared at the screen, the beam burning through her hair, the smoke barely visible within the shadows of the hotel room. He’d never felt this much out of his element, this much...

  Oh God, please…

  He heard a soft series of electronic tones as the security locks released and the door opened.

  A young woman ran into the room. She wore a rumpled business suit and a Walker-for-President lapel pin. Her hair was straggled, as if she’d been in the rain. She grabbed a pair of scissors from the desk and began cutting the tape at his ankles. Jack grumbled through the gag as she untied it and he spit it out with the cotton wadding, red from his biting on the gag. She thought he looked like he’d been cruci
fied.

  “Who are you?” Jack said, struggling with his free hand.

  “Jennifer O’Connor! I’m an intern. Please, we have to hurry! He always comes back. He seems to know. Please, please, faster!”

  The killer didn’t know that Jennifer O’Connor had decided to step out of herself, to protect her life and the love she knew. The killer didn’t know that earlier that same morning, a woman had picked up Jennifer in the rain and had steeled her with stories of her children that she was trying to save, even if she hadn’t understood everything the woman was saying. The killer didn’t know that Jennifer had been following him for two days, staying in his shadow, pulling her head back when he turned, watching from behind as he entered the code to Palmer’s office. The killer didn’t know – couldn’t know – the purity of love she felt for her husband, a light that infused her days. The killer didn’t know that at night she’d been walking in her dreams with a star holding over her.

  The killer didn’t know that his only blind spot was the pure white-light of innocence.

  “Here, here!” she yelled in whispers, taking his hand and helping him to his feet.

  “Hurry, we have to go!” she said, pulling him towards the door.

  He didn’t move and her hand slipped out from the blood. He looked at the screen and then at the petrified face of Jennifer O’Connor, a person he’d never known, who had saved him.

  With his steel-blue eyes, he looked at her so she would know.

  “I can’t.”

  †

  While Lani slept, another of Odin’s eyes began the search for its next target: looking down into the ancient palace and following the corridor lined with pageantry and into the bed chamber of Chinese Premier Xiong Deng Hu, sleeping next to a beautiful girl.

  Once Deng Hu had been located, Odin began locking in the final targeting sequence: Lani followed by Jack, the Chinese premier quickly followed by the Spanish leader, each perishing with an identical brain hemorrhage, the inverted pentagram kill patterns identical, and, finally, in a grand stroke, President Walker collapsing with a sudden rupture to his heart.