J AMES NEVER ATE SO WELL. The beef – tall and juicy, blood drizzling with each slice of the knife – fell apart in his mouth. He chewed with ravenous imprecision, one large bite after the next. Sides of vegetables so fresh they might have been grown next door; bowls of steaming cheese, pasta, fish, and clams – plus long, stringy yellow strips of something he did not recognize – entranced his nose then lined up en route to his stomach.
They brought him enough food for two families, yet he barreled through it all. A far cry from the daily routine of cans, microwaveable pouches, and pre-fab cafeteria fare.
“It’s all so good,” he told Ignatius. “I mean, beyond good. Is this what food is really supposed to taste like?”
“Techniques vary from world to world.” Ignatius rocked back and forth in a skiff, looking toward the Florida shore hundreds of yards away. “Sometimes, it’s all in the water.”
“Whatever. I love it. I want more. My body wants more.”
“You will need at least five times the caloric intake to maintain this new physique. In time, even more. How do you feel?”
“Hard. Like steel.”
“And growing. I can’t see the end of it.”
“It’s like I was shoved inside someone else’s body.”
“That will go away in time. Once you have seen action, taken care of the next phase of your business, you will embrace this body.”
James looked toward the shore. The cottages morphed in and out of vision, as if fighting to escape a growing fog.
“What’s happening, Ignatius?”
“You’re leaving this place, James. Leaving the memories of your childhood. That Earth was never your home, just a holding tank. In time, you’ll discard all of this. Does that make you sad?”
He mulled the idea for an instant. “No. Everything there was a lie. I’m where I was always meant to be.”
“Even if you have to die for your cause?”
James looked up from his dinner of bottomless servings. The door to the command dining room, for which he was given exclusive access, slid open. Augustus Perrone entered with a peacekeeper. The soldier held sentry at the door while Perrone, drinking a glass of wine, took a chair across the table from James.
“Yes,” James told Ignatius. “Even if I have to die.”
Ignatius smiled as fog crawled over the skiff.
“You have come so far so fast, James Bouchet.”
James turned his attention to the admiral. He ran a napkin over his lips. “Thank you for all this.”
“You earned it, James. Give the word, and I’ll summon another round of … well, everything.”
“I might take you up on it.”
James heard his voice mutating into a deep, crisp tone, crackling with age and authority. Like Valentin.
“I appreciate your cooperation,” the admiral said. “The genetic screening, the shower, the change of clothes. You appear to understand I am not your enemy.”
“But no sense taking chances, right?” James pointed to the sentry. “I could turn you to ash before he could shoot.”
“True. However, I think you misunderstand. My aide is not here for my protection. He knows I am in no danger.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
Perrone tapped his stream amp and threw a cube to a resting position just about James’s eye line. A video appeared of Michael sitting on grass. It was dark. Sammie spoke.
“Tell me,” she said.
“When we were there with Christian Bidwell,” Michael began. “When I had that bastard in my sights … point-blank … I could’ve made him do anything. Told him to run. But I didn’t because I knew what he was, and every-damn-thing he’d ever done to us. I never hated anybody like that before. I pulled that trigger the first time because I couldn’t tell myself to do anything else. But the second time, Sammie? I shot him the second time because I wanted to kill him, and I did not care. I saw him lying there and … I was glad. Good goddamn riddance to a sorry sack of shit.”
Perrone snapped his fingers, and the holocube dissolved.
“I am in no danger, James, because I am not your enemy. But in case you should ever consider aggressive action, beware. I have an agent embedded close to Mr. Cooper. If I ever experience the slightest degree of … let’s call it death … my agent will receive instant notification that this,” he touched his chest, “beats no longer. He will kill Mr. Cooper without hesitation.” James rose from his chair, but Perrone remained relaxed, sipped more wine.
“Please understand, James. Christian was two when I last saw him. I would have been a stranger to him had he returned. What I lost was the chance to rebuild a relationship with my son. Michael deprived me of that opportunity. To his credit, the entire transmission suggests he feels remorse. A weakness, but an admirable one.”
The hunger thickened, the dark swarmed, but he sat.
“So, you’ll hold this over me until I do everything you want.”
The admiral laughed. “No, no, James. You have me all wrong. You and I will be partners. I can provide you with the resources you will need to take whatever path you choose, and you will help me save the Chancellory. Our interests align.”
“Save the Chancellors? Why?”
Perrone chased a holocube and flicked a finger toward a wall beyond the head of the table. It dissolved into a room-width map of the Collectorate’s forty worlds.
“If I am correct, your Mentor program revealed why people such as you were created. Yes?”
“I was trying not to listen when Lydia … the Mentor … was filling me full of Collectorate history. Didn’t enjoy being gagged and tied to a chair.” He studied the star map. “Something happened a long time ago. A cataclysm, she said. The Chancellors will die out in a few generations because of it. They created things like me to become an army to wipe out your enemies. Berserkers, she called us. Walking nuclear bombs.”
He nodded. “Yes, well, that is one feature among many, and not a productive one at that. James, you are more than a weapon. You’re the future. That cataclysm? It all happened on a colony called Hiebimini.” He pointed, and the most distant world from Earth glowed. “The very resource Chancellors depended upon for centuries for physical and intellectual superiority was destroyed. It was a mineral called brontinium. We have enough reserves of its extract for thirty years. It is as essential to our survival as the air we breathe.
“Men like me will become an anachronism. Then a memory. But men like you will carry on the Chancellory name in a new form. A new species. Human and Jewel. Unstoppable. Infinitely adaptable. And when challenged? Weapons of mass destruction. Better than your creators. Exactly as evolution demands. What you did tonight proved the experiment a success. You have given hope to the hundreds of millions of Chancellors who have no idea you exist.”
James wondered what Perrone would say if he knew James planned to kill all those evolutionary wonders and then himself?
“I might keep mum on that detail,” Ignatius said.
At that instant, James recalled the rest of Lydia’s story – and the name of the man who brought about the Chancellory’s cataclysm.
“It was you,” he told Ignatius through the growing fog. “She said it was a man named Ignatius Horne. He did the Chancellors in.”
“Yes,” Ignatius said. “He and I, together. He was a good man who found redemption at the end.”
He faced Perrone. “So, what happens next?”
“We retrieve the others like you. Operations are beginning across the Collectorate. As I speak, we are tracking the Jewel who crossed the IDF in the Ukrainian Expanse. In the short term, we tread carefully, avoiding factions who consider your species to be an abomination. In the long term, we create a new civilization. You and your penis will be uncommonly well exercised.”
“Holy shit,” he told Ignatius. “He wants to farm us.”
“On the bright side, James, you have never been fond of being a virgin. Your status should change soon enough.”
<
br /> Laughter pierced the fog. Perrone asked an unexpected question.
“Do you feel invincible, James?”
“What? I don’t know how to answer. I mean, I’m bigger, stronger, and I can sense things like I never could before. But I can be killed. It already happened once.”
Perrone rapped the table twice. “Good. Do not let these changes go to your head. You are evolving into something unprecedented, but immortality was not built into your design. Even once you are trained in how to kill with efficiency, a round of enemy flash pegs can still tear your innards apart. Death will always stalk you, James.”
“Tell me something new. Why are you …?”
“Do you regret killing your brother?”
He stumbled over his words. “I … I didn’t see any other choice.”
“So then, no regrets?”
“No.”
“Because you sensed Valentin was the first of many to come.”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Hard to explain. I can see the future opening up to me.”
“Like a prediction? A vision?”
“No. Just feelings. Certainty.”
“Certainty of what? That you will kill people?”
He swallowed hard. “Thousands.”
James didn’t understand why the number fell from his lips with ease, or why it didn’t bother him.
Perrone reacted with a wry smile. “Sounds like the Berserker in you.”
“Or I’m realistic. I met my brother a few hours ago and then I jammed a knife through his throat. That’s just who I am now.”
“Maybe.” He turned to the aide who stood silent sentry and nodded. The aide left the dining room.
“James, in recent weeks I became aware of extraordinary details not only about the Jewel program but also about a competing venture. An attempt to breed immortal humans. The ultimate stride toward godhood itself. A typical Chancellor lives about one hundred forty standard years. What if the final, immutable law of nature could be broken? What if one-forty becomes one thousand?”
James had a bad feeling about this.
“Live forever? How’s that possible? Are they Berserkers, too?”
“Until this evening, I had no idea. I thought immortality was as ridiculous a concept as the blending of Jewel and human. So, I tested the proposition.”
He looked into the admiral’s eyes, and they betrayed Perrone’s secret before the words crossed his lips. The madness of it all bore down on James. He didn’t need to consult with Ignatius this time.
“Are you serious?” James said.
“Bring him in,” Perrone shouted.
The door vanished, and the aide returned. At his side, Valentin Bouchet looked good as new, dressed in the same form-fitting, brown-and-white bodysuit James wore. No blood, no hole in his neck, and his eyes no longer filled with a savage need to kill.
“Come, Valentin,” Perrone said. “Sit with us.”
“No way,” James muttered. “There’s no way.”
“I wasn’t sure either,” the admiral said as Valentin sat, struggling to make eye contact with his brother. “The wound did not heal for almost ten minutes. His heart restarted twenty minutes after that, and the rest of him … returned to form. Still a delay with his larynx. Repairing itself. He’ll be able to speak in time.”
James couldn’t take his eyes off the brother he killed.
“You were testing us both.”
The admiral patted Valentin on the back. “My risen gods. Brothers who will reshape humanity. Brothers mightily deceived.
“Gentlemen, we have so much to discuss. But first, I think it should be clear to both of you that Emil Bouchet, your father, while a brilliant man, does not understand how to raise sons. I think you need to have a poignant conversation with the man when next you see him. Yes?”
James lost his appetite.
PART TWO
BROTHERS AND SISTERS
I never believed in love at first sight. Why should I? My so-called parents might have loved each other, but they never showed it.
At school, the kids called it love, but it was really about sex. Every dude I knew just wanted to find a quick way under the covers. They shared stories every time they conquered somebody. And if they didn’t finish the job, they’d make up whatever came to mind.
Mostly, they just wanted a trophy at their side. It’s not like they were going to marry these girls.
Sometimes, they’d make a baby.
Most girls thought I was a freak. Or dangerous. They talked to me, but only so they could twist my words when they texted about me.
Turns out, I was the most dangerous freak they’d ever know. Did I kill any of them before I crossed the fold? The ones who lived will tell stories about me.
You see, I know the truth: Love at first sight is real. It’s the most powerful obsession a man can have. Once it grabs hold, you got no choice but to play.
I knew it the second I saw her.
I knew I’d kill for her.
There’s so much blood, but she leads me on.
These things I hunger to do…
20
10 kilometers east of the Dnieper River, Ukraine
April 4, 1885
One standard day earlier
R AYNA TSUKANOVA REMOVED HER PAPAKHA HAT and bent over the railroad track. She ran her hand along the steel rail, laid less than a year ago — the final connector on the route from Kiev to Donetsk. The slightest vibration predicted the approach of the train. She calculated time and distance with the help of her Mentor.
“He is almost here,” Rayna told Mentor in poetic Russian. “Father will be proud to see me.”
“Assuming they do not kill him first,” the Mentor replied, his accent patterned off the British Chancellor who cared for Rayna the first year after the observers crossed the IDF.
“If they do, I will slay them all.” She grabbed the hilt of her shaksha but did not remove it from the pouch on her knee-length kaftan. “An honest weapon for dishonest men.”
The Mentor stood in the middle of the tracks: a tall man in white, goateed and sporting a silver pocket watch.
“I have little doubt you would make quite the mess of them, my dearest. However, it seems dreadfully inefficient. If we do not reach the fold in four hours, its relative position will shift, and your mission will be sorely compromised. This rescue attempt unnerves me.”
She boiled inside. They had this conversation before.
“And you prefer I leave Father to this mad world?”
“No one asked him to align with Prince Alexei. If you had passed along my warning seven years ago, as I politely asked, Pyotr never would have entangled himself with the Romanovs. You could have been simple farmers, lived a quiet life. But Pyotr could not live without the trappings of a Chancellor. What is fifteen years of suffering in exchange for saving his entire race?”
“Silence, Mentor.” Rayna grabbed her rifle and rushed toward the forest. “If you continue speaking this way, I will cancel our deal. I have the power.”
Rayna smiled when he disappeared. Mentor knew she could cancel him in an instant. The deal they spent more than a year negotiating — his survival after her conversion in exchange for him restoring her pre-Jewel memories — gave her great leverage. Rayna had no intention of taking orders from her Chancellor masters.
She reached the edge of the forest, where her comrades — two Chancellors and six proper Cossacks — waited on horseback. She mounted her own steed.
“Remember,” she told them, “They will hold Father in the rear car. Kill any who resist but leave Vasily Shkuro for me. He is a traitor, and he will die a traitor’s death.”
Kamily Doroshenko, a graybeard Hetman of the Right-bank Ukraine and the man who rescued the Tsukanovs at their darkest hour, raised his blade.
“For the honor of Pyotr Tsukanov, we follow your lead, Rayna Tsukanova. May God grant us good fortune.”
Together, they raised their blades. Rayna k
new that come what may, these Cossacks would fight to the death for her. Only in the past year had such fortune come to her household.
The very idea of following a girl into battle repulsed the fighters under Kamily’s command. Though she was taller than any Doroshenko, with broad shoulders and steeled eyes, her choice to wear the traditional garb of the Don Cossacks disturbed their sense of order. Where was the blouse? The oversized skirt? The lace? And her hair—how dare she shave all but a left forelock. Is she man or woman? Does she mock our traditions?
“A Cossack is not a Cossack without a forelock,” she reminded them when they questioned her motives.
Yet she rode a horse with more courage or discipline than any of them. She fired a rifle with precision, capable of killing the enemy at one hundred meters. But of greatest worth, she stood between Kamily’s wife and daughters when vengeful assassins tried to waylay them on the road to Lubny. She killed one with her blade, leaving the other able to provide intelligence before she slashed the man’s throat. Her actions tied the family houses Doroshenko and Tsukanov.
The train came into view on schedule. Two cars, as expected, trailed the engine. If reports were accurate, her father would be guarded by six men on Vasily Shkuro’s payroll. Rifles, certainly. Blades, she doubted. These men have no honor.
As expected, the train slowed as it passed the Cossacks’ hidden position. Even a half-blind engineer could see the logs stacked three layers high on the track.
Rayna, her observers, and the Cossacks shared a knowing smile and grabbed their horses’ reins. They charged out behind the passing train, another six allies emerging from the tree line on the far side of the tracks. They proceeded with a disciplined adherence to the plan Rayna devised with Kamily.
The train screeched as it bellowed excess steam. Before the wheels made their final rotation, the rescuers assumed positions on all sides. Two guarded either side of the engine. Two dismounted their steeds and leaped onboard the first car. Three remained on horseback, their rifles aimed at the most important car. The Chancellor observers raced to the forward door of that car, while Rayna leaped from her horse and joined Kamily at the rear. They boarded the steps and stood abreast the door, their rifles high.
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