The Savior's Game (The Daniel Byrne Trilogy Book 3)

by Sean Chercover

  It occurred to him that maybe he should get himself checked over for a concussion, since he was going to the hospital. He was still having trouble collecting his thoughts.

  I am in blood . . . something.

  Daniel hadn’t passed anyone for a couple of blocks and there was a lull in the sirens. He wondered if he’d taken a wrong turn. He walked a bit farther, stopped, looked around.

  He was alone on the block. And yet he felt . . .

  He turned in the direction of the feeling, but there was no one there. Just the plain brick wall of a nondescript grocery store. He stepped closer, and the wall seemed to shimmer slightly, then became like a rippling, cloudy, liquid membrane, and Daniel could barely see through it, just enough to make out a man standing in a room with plain white walls. The membrane grew lighter, like some kind of aperture opening, like a—

  Daniel realized he was looking through an impenetrable window into Source, and he knew the man on the other side was Noah.

  Noah walked forward. Daniel stood rooted in place, unable to move, and the closer Noah got, the more familiar he looked, and then the membrane’s haze lifted completely and Daniel could see right through.

  He jerked back, feeling like the ground had just fallen out from under him, like the dream of falling that jerks you back from the edge of sleep.

  “Hello, Daniel,” said Conrad Winter.

  29

  Conrad . . . you’re—dead.”

  Noah smiled. “I knew you’d be surprised. But not Conrad, no. Conrad Winter was just a dream I was having. And not dead. Awake, courtesy of your bullet. Fully alive, more alive than I ever could’ve imagined. The instant you shot me, the instant you saw me die, I was reborn in Source. Reborn a god.” Noah touched his chest where Daniel had shot him. “I arrived with blood all over my shirt, two bullet holes in the fabric, right here. But no wound in my flesh. Proof that my life on Earth had been but a dream. I should thank you, really.”

  “You gonna thank me for killing Elias, too?”

  Noah dismissed it with a wave. “I’ve got others. And you didn’t kill me—you freed me.”

  “I might still kill you yet,” said Daniel.

  Noah laughed through his nose. “Interesting to see how many cities you’ll destroy trying. Congratulations on San Diego, by the way.”

  Perhaps Daniel had been in shock, and maybe he had a concussion—or maybe he’d just been in denial. But now it all came clear. He had cleaved the earth in two under Elias. He had created the earthquake. All those bodies in the street, all the destruction, the lives destroyed. And Dana Cameron had seen it. She’d seen Daniel standing in the middle of a city he’d destroyed, and she’d tried to warn him.

  He felt like throwing up.

  “Really,” said Noah. “Nice job. Everywhere you go, Daniel, corpses pile up. I know you don’t approve of my methodology—even when I was dreaming you thought yourself superior—but the fact of the matter is, your body count now outstrips mine. Sure, I killed Stigmata Girl in Nigeria and your uncle, but you killed 269 with a drone strike. I killed a few hundred in Liberia, but you just snuffed out that many plus a thousand more in San Diego. Face it, every time you try to do good, you do bad. And yet you just keep on trying. At some point one has to wonder if maybe deep down you enjoy leaving bodies in your wake. Otherwise, you’d stop. You haven’t the power to succeed, and yet you’re perfectly willing to press on. It’s curious, really.” Noah shook his head, putting the subject aside. “I may not dream anymore, but I can still watch it. Whatever god before me created this dream—”

  “Conrad, you’re not a god.”

  “I seem to be. At any rate, I’m the only being here that stands outside the dream. And until some greater god shows up, I have the ability—and the responsibility—to make a better dream. Why would you even want to stop me?”

  “It’s not a dream,” Daniel insisted. “These are real people. You were a real person once, too.”

  “That’s just what you want to believe,” said Noah. “But you’ve been to Source. You’ve been awake. Well, mostly awake. You know your power isn’t close to mine and, frankly, even if it were, you’re too late.” He looked past Daniel to the ruined street. “Enjoy your handiwork, Daniel.”

  Noah turned and walked away, and the membrane clouded over and shimmered briefly, and Daniel was staring at a brick wall.

  I am in blood

  Stepp’d in so far that, should I wade no more,

  Returning were as tedious as go o’er.

  The lines from Macbeth rang in Daniel’s ears as he trod down the center of the road, walking along the double yellow line. An ambulance passed and pulled to a stop beside a shirtless man sitting on the curb ahead. The man held a bunched-up T-shirt against the side of his head. Once white, the shirt was now completely sodden, dripping red. A triangle—Daniel looked closer—a seven-inch shard of glass jutted out from the man’s shoulder, a stream of blood running down over a tattoo on his bicep.

  A grinning skull, smoking a cigarette and wearing a top hat. A scroll beneath read:

  Live Fast—Die Young

  Daniel stood, turning around in place, taking it all in with clear eyes.

  The dead, the wounded. The destruction.

  Dream or not, an utter nightmare.

  You caused this.

  A woman’s corpse lay against the side of a building, facedown, on top of a dead boy.

  Daniel caught a flash-memory from Liberia—the woman and girl in the pit of bodies next to the Lofa River. And another—the bones of a long-dead family in a cave in Norway.

  He forced himself to look at the corpses lying before him now, and to acknowledge what he saw. They’d been slammed against the side of the building by a wall of water. This was all his doing. He couldn’t have been more responsible if he’d shot them both in the head.

  Daniel threw up in the gutter.

  30

  The old television hanging above the bar was muted, thankfully. On the screen, images of the devastation in San Diego. A chyron text scroll at the bottom of the screen read:

  SAN DIEGO QUAKE: 1,269 DEAD—6,000 INJURED

  Daniel sat at a table, an ice bag on his left wrist, staring at the screen as it cut back to the anchor desk in the studio. The chyron now read:

  IS CALIFORNIA READY FOR THE BIG ONE?

  Across the bar, Pat hung up the payphone. He threaded his way between pool tables, took his seat across from Daniel, and drank from a bottle of root beer.

  Pat said, “You were right. Miz Kara was at the hospital, doctorin’. My guys are all over it.” He sipped from the bottle, added, “We’re set, she’s fine. And don’t worry about Redhead—I was chasin’ him through the parking lot when the tsunami hit. Dude got pancaked by a minivan.”

  Daniel adjusted the position of the ice bag on his wrist. “I know Conrad’s unlikely to go after her again—she was just bait to get to me, and I think he’s done talking to me—but I need to know she’s safe. You sure of these guys?”

  “San Diego is Navy SEAL City,” said Pat. “My brothers. I got you the very best. Nobody’s gonna mess with your girl.”

  Daniel nodded. “But I don’t want her to know they’re there—”

  “Did I mention: SEALs? Unless and until they want to be seen, they’re invisible.”

  “Okay,” said Daniel. “Thank you.”

  “Anything for true love,” said Pat.

  They fell into an uneasy silence, sitting across from each other in the Hooz On First bar in Barstow, California, Pat sipping his root beer, Daniel drinking flavorless coffee and shifting the ice bag around his wrist, just to be doing something.

  Daniel glanced up at the silent television over the bar. Scenes of a massive AIT protest in Chicago’s Grant Park. The text scroll at the bottom of the screen read:

  MENTAL HOSPITALS CROWDED

  PATIENTS PREDICTING END TIMES

  PROTESTORS DEMAND TRANSPARENCY

  Pat broke the silence after a minute. “You really cause
d that earthquake, huh?”

  “Yeah,” said Daniel. “I really did.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Pat.

  “Me too.”

  “You couldn’t have known what would happen. It was an accident.”

  “That’s a cop-out,” said Daniel. “Momentarily blinded by sunlight reflecting off a building, I miss a Stop sign and run over an old lady crossing the road. That’s an accident.” He sipped from the coffee mug. “In order to kill Elias the way I did, I became rage, filled myself with it. It was a choice, not an accident. When you abide in hatred, bad shit’s gonna happen. Bottom line: I killed thirteen hundred people today. No, I didn’t intend to, but intentions are bullshit—you know that.” He looked straight at Pat. “I gotta say, Conrad’s right about that much.”

  “So now what? You can’t undo it.”

  “I can’t deny I’m responsible for it, either. I just added a whole lot of innocent blood to my CV. I have to face that. But I have no idea what to do with it.”

  They sat in silence again.

  “You’ll get through it,” said Pat.

  “Yeah,” said Daniel.

  But would he? Calling it an accident, protesting his good intentions—that sort of rationalization was an insult to the dead. It compounded sin upon sin, and Daniel refused to indulge in it. Assuming he made it through this thing alive and sane, he would have to tell Kara what he’d done. Could she forgive him? Would she want him as a father to their child?

  And how would he look into his child’s eyes and offer a father’s moral guidance, his own closet bursting with skeletons?

  Pat gestured at the coffee mug on the table. “Wouldn’t blame you if you wanted to crawl inside a bottle right now. I’d want to, and I don’t even drink.”

  “I want to,” said Daniel. “I can’t. Maybe later.” He lifted the ice bag off his wrist and dropped it on the table. “I keep thinking about why Conrad did what he did. Day my uncle died, Conrad visited me at Father Henri’s place. He offered me a full Vatican pardon if I kept Tim from making that speech. Said if I allowed him to step onto the stage, I’d be in for a world of heartache. He wasn’t bluffing. But now he just shows up to taunt me? Twist his mustache and gloat? Doesn’t make sense. He didn’t offer me anything, he didn’t threaten me . . .”

  “First, stop thinking of him as Conrad. Conrad was just a man.”

  “Pat, he’s not a god.”

  “We don’t know what he is,” said Pat, “and it don’t matter. He thinks he’s a god, and he’s got god-like power. So turn it around, look at it from the perspective of a dude named Noah with god-like power. Why would that guy show up to taunt you?”

  Daniel thought about it. “Noah wanted to make me want exactly what I want right now. He told me I was too late—said it almost casually—but if I was really too late, there’d have been no reason for him to communicate with me at all. Why go to the trouble? He wants me to give up and climb into a bottle, because it’s not too late and he knows I’ve got the pieces and I just haven’t put them together.”

  “So put them together,” said Pat.

  Daniel looked into his coffee, breathed deep and slow, and quieted the internal chatter to focus on one thought at a time. “When I was on the pier with Elias, he said I was gonna die trying to protect a dream. And Noah said he was going to make a better dream. Not make this dream better.” Daniel looked at Pat. “He doesn’t want to improve the dream. He’s gonna end it and start a new one.”

  “Well, shit,” said Pat. He examined the label on his root beer for a few moments before looking up. “Guess we better stop him.”

  “Guess so.”

  “If you were Noah, how would you—”

  “I’m thinking,” said Daniel.

  Pat nodded, waited.

  Daniel said, “He’s gonna make the ribbons touch—and the universe containing Earth will cease to be. How does he do that? He’s exponentially more powerful than I am—and look what I did in a fit of pique. He could throw a temper tantrum in Source and lay utter waste to this planet . . . might make the dream a hellish nightmare, but obviously that’s not enough to end it, or he’d have done it by now. So we can assume simple physical destruction, like a natural disaster, won’t bring the ribbons together. Following me?”

  “Just barely,” said Pat.

  Daniel said, “Look: think of this place as Earth—”

  “That’s easy enough, it is Earth.”

  “Okay—metaphor alert—think of this as Earth, and Source as the sun, which basically powers life on Earth, and you want to bring them together. Which do you move? Earth, right? So, to bring the ribbons together, something has to happen on this plane, or Noah would’ve done it from where he is. He’s got a roomful of meditating monks in Source who at least believe they’re influencing things here—and let’s assume they are—and he’s sending goons like Elias who can cross over and influence events on Earth. So, what kind of events could bring the ribbons closer? We know the ribbons are closest during periods of disruptive change in human affairs, and we know Elias, as Drapeau, operated in a world of the very highest geopolitical stakes, one that included plutocrats like the Council, moving dark money around to finance political instability.”

  Pat whistled. “It’s like the Council’s been lining up the dominos—they finance radical lunatics in oil-rich nations, hit South Carolina with a bioweapon, expanding the war across the Middle East, bankrupting Western democracy while they finance the rise of ultra-nationalists everywhere . . .”

  Daniel said, “Dominos are stable, unless someone gives them a push. Conrad may not have known it at the time, but he set them up, and now Noah’s gonna knock them down.” The hair stood up on his forearms. “What would it take to trigger the next truly global war?”

  He pushed his chair back and stood.

  “We gotta get to New York.”

  31

  Daniel walked through the park, past Bethesda Fountain and along the path toward the elegant cast-iron Bow Bridge. Trees bare and grass brown, but the day was sunny and unseasonably warm, so Daniel went gloveless and hadn’t even bothered zipping his leather jacket.

  Also made it easier to deploy his pistol, should the need arise.

  He didn’t really expect the need to arise.

  No harm playing it safe.

  He stepped onto the bridge. Ayo Onatade, head of the Foundation’s AIT team, entered the bridge from the opposite shore. When they reached the middle, Daniel wrapped Ayo in a hug and kissed her cheek and Ayo hugged him back, but when they separated, she slapped his arm.

  “Wayward boy,” she said.

  “For what it’s worth”—Daniel smiled—“I’ve missed the hell out of you, Ayo.”

  “Of course you have. Who wouldn’t?”

  Daniel leaned against the railing and scanned the park. Office workers taking lunchtime power walks. A few tourists snapping pictures to post online for the folks back home. A couple in their fifties, arms intertwined, bodies touching, walking as one, strolling like time didn’t exist. A group of excited schoolchildren on a Central Park field trip, harried teachers barely keeping them corralled.

  Real people, living real lives.

  “It’s beautiful,” said Daniel. “The park, even in winter.”

  “Especially in winter,” said Ayo.

  “Did you bring it?” said Daniel.

  Ayo dug into her purse, pulled out a folded piece of paper, and handed it to Daniel. “That’s him.”

  Daniel unfolded the photo and looked at the face of Jay Eckinsburger, the Foundation field operative who’d predicted Daniel’s arrival in Source, and who’d gotten lost somewhere along the way.

  It was the man Daniel had seen in the padded cell in Noah’s tower.

  Ayo said, “I’m afraid he’ll be of no use to you. Hasn’t uttered a word in ages.”

  “But he’s conscious,” said Daniel.

  “Barely. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t react to anything at all. They put food in front of him and he
’ll eat a little, robotically, but that’s it.”

  “Raoul said—”

  “Raoul was just trying to get you to come back,” said Ayo. “Jay never said what it was you might be able to stop, just that you could stop what he couldn’t.” She shivered. “It was the last thing he said.”

  Daniel handed the photo back. Eckinsburger had managed to be conscious in both places at once, but completely insane in both places at once.

  Daniel’s head swam. Be there, or be here. Don’t be both.

  Pat appeared behind Ayo and gave Daniel a nod, confirming the area was clear.

  “Hey, darlin’.”

  Ayo didn’t miss a beat, turning her sights on Pat while accepting his embrace. “And as for you, Raoul is seriously displeased.”

  “He’s always displeased.”

  “He said you’re officially in his doghouse for running around after Drapeau while the world is falling apart, said to tell you he’ll call when he returns from England and he expects you to answer the phone.”

  “Drapeau’s dead,” said Daniel. “He made a try for me and I killed him.”

  “Well, thank god for that,” said Ayo. Then she turned all business. “I have very little time, boys. What’s so important?”

  “I lied to Raoul,” said Daniel. “I’ve had AIT for some time, and I’ve seen . . . I can’t get into how I know the things I know, and frankly you wouldn’t believe me anyway. But in the next few days, something really bad is going to happen on Earth.”

  Ayo looked at him sideways. “On Earth.”

  “Somewhere, on Earth,” said Daniel. “I mean, I don’t know where on Earth it’s gonna happen, or exactly when, or what it is. I realize that’s vague—”