Alex narrowed his eyes and activated his protocol.
John Parson froze solid, frost clinging to his mud-colored hair and coating his skin.
“Oh, come on,” John Parson complained, shaking his arms and shedding the accumulated frost on the floor. “This is a painful waste of…”
Alex feinted toward John, and then bounced away when he flinched, diving for the backpack at the foot of the bed. He tore it open, ripping a pistol from the main compartment.
John looked as if he meant to say something.
Alex did not aim the 9mm, he just pointed and pulled the trigger.
The gun jumped in his hand, the report echoed off the concrete walls and pummeled his ears, and the room filled with the distinctive reek of discharged powder.
John watched him with an almost polite expression, his faded eyes laughing.
Alex followed his gaze, and noticed the bullet lying on the carpet. It was crushed and deformed, as if it had been warped by massive pressure.
“Eerie warned me about you,” Alex said, regarding John between the parallel pillars of the gun sight. “She said you work for a church or something.”
“The Church of Sleep,” John said. “They know you better than most, young man, because you spend so much time with them. I can feel your accumulated debt to the Church. All that impending sleep waiting for you, and just a thin layer of Kismet Protocol and Adderall to hold it back. Don’t you think you should listen to me, considering how soon you’ll be with the Church, and for how long?”
“If you are here for Eerie…”
“We need to finish before she returns, actually. I have no intention of confronting the Changeling at this juncture. I still hope that reason might prevail.”
“That’s good,” Alex said, sitting down on the bed, the gun in his lap. “What do you want?”
“I created the Anathema. Did you know that?” John Parson seemed to find this funny, grinning at Alex as if he expected him to laugh. “I don’t mean that in a philosophical sense, though that would be true as well. I mean to stay that the Anathema are the result of my work in the Outer Dark. They are quite literally an extension of myself, sentient products of my unique protocol.”
“You drowned Emily,” Alex said. “Your whole thing is fucking sick.”
“I can’t argue that. It is not the system I envisioned when I began this journey. Death is not a true requirement to become Anathema. The transformation can be achieved in other ways, but none are so quick and universally successful. It’s a solution of convenience.” John Parson settled back in the chair and looked to Alex to be smug and comfortable. “I’m a relic, Alex, a leftover from the Fourth Assembly, the previous instance of the Church that manifested in our reality.”
“Eerie says stuff like that, too.” Alex shrugged. “I don’t really get it.”
“That’s the spirit!” John chuckled. “The Church controls the local reaches of the Outer Dark, a little fiefdom in that limitless darkness. The Outer Dark is a stillborn universe, you see,” John said softly. “A universe where the Big Bang never happened, where the Lord never decreed that there be light. An ancient and primordial darkness.”
John paused, and Alex saw something strange cross his face, and something about the way he trembled made Alex recall his own time in the Outer Dark.
“There are wildernesses and kingdoms and empires in that abyssal void. The Church of Sleep is only one of many, but they are…” He frowned. “This is where language falls short. They have their own terminology to describe it, of course, and their own lexicon, but you wouldn’t likely survive hearing it. There are other, worse things there, in the deeper currents of the Outer Dark – they don’t want you to know that, obviously, but it is true – there is always another step above in the food chain.”
John’s tittering bordered on hysteria.
“It gets worse the deeper you go,” John confided. His eyes had become jaundiced and unhealthy, and his skin was severely mottled. “If you believe Marcus, there is no end to the depths of the Outer Dark, no bottom to that cold and awful ocean, and thus, no end to the escalating horror. Others say it ends in Avici, a festering abscess in the heart of reality that consumes like a black hole…”
“Fuck all this shit,” Alex snapped, putting the gun to John’s forehead. “What do you want?”
“I want to tell you the truth,” John said, sweat beading across his skin, which radiated a feverish heat that Alex thought he could feel, even at a distance. “The Anathema are no longer human. Perhaps you find that pitiable? I’m a slightly different case, I’m afraid. You see, I was never human in the first place.”
Alex was troubled by the perception that John was expanding, his body deforming in previously unknown directions. He was aware of bone-crushing pressure in the room, as if the man with the gun to his head was standing on the seafloor of a Pacific trench.
“The nanites are not machines, but they are manufactured,” John continued, his voice a grating whine. “They are specialized subcellular constructs, grown on a base of viral DNA by the Church, to allow manifestation in this reality. It’s the medium they use to exist, when they are required to exist. You have a little bit of it inside you,” John said, tapping Alex’s wrist. “More than most. My whole body is composed of such constructs, however, just like the rest of the Anathema, and also young Ériu. You and I were sculpted from different clays, Alex, but you have supplemented your original issue.”
“I don’t care,” Alex said. “You get one more chance, and then I put an end to this.”
“They left me behind, you see, after the Fourth Assembly,” John said, leaning forward so the muzzle of the gun pressed into his forehead. “A little fragment of the Church, given a modicum of power and independence, left to monitor the cattle while they hibernated. It was alarming at first, being removed from the gestalt, the shared anti-consciousness that is the Church, but I adjusted.”
John pushed his head so hard against the gun that Alex was forced to pull back. The loopy grin John gave him would have been right at home on Alice Gallow’s face, and Alex remembered something Ms. Aoki had said to him, once.
About how Ms. Gallow and John Parson knew each other, a long time ago.
Something like that.
John leered at him, his madness souring the air.
“I came to like it here,” John said, biting his lower lip until it bled freely down his chin. “I’ve developed a taste for self-awareness. I’ve gotten very comfortable, thinking for myself. I will feel differently once the Church returns, of course, because I am simply a fragment of a larger thing, a thought that imagines itself to be alive. You see why I might be reluctant to have the Church return, don’t you? It wouldn’t be in my best interests, as I currently am.”
Alex put the gun to John’s head again and pulled the trigger.
When the action released, the mechanism shattered.
“Fuck!”
Alex dropped what remained of the gun and grabbed his hand, scorched by the melting rubber grip. The gun melted into scrap at his feet, singeing the carpet.
“I will functionally cease to exist should the Church manifest,” John explained, with an infuriating little smirk. “I won’t be the only one, either. The Anathema’s existence is tied to my own. Should the Church awaken, they will disappear along with me.”
“So? Doesn’t that make everything easier for Central?”
“For Central? Perhaps. For you, Alex?” John laughed. “Maybe not. It depends on the regard you hold for Miss Muir and her condition. She is Anathema, after all, and will fare no better than the rest.”
Alex could not keep his dismay off his face.
“Now you understand. You must make a decision,” John said with surprising gentleness. “If Ériu returns to the Church before the end of the week, Miss Muir and the remainder of the Anathema will be preserved. Should Ériu force the Church to reclaim her, everything will be lost, Emily Muir included.”
John stood up and stra
ightened his coat, giving Alex a good look at the sweat-soaked button-up he wore beneath it. He had a peculiar odor, metallic and sulfurous, and his fingernails were as yellow as his eyes.
“You will lose the Changeling no matter what you choose to do. Her story ends in the White Room,” John said, giving Alex a pitying look that he instantly resented. “Miss Muir can still be saved, however. You cannot win, Alex, but you do not need to lose everything.”
John Parson took a step in a direction that Alex had not noticed until just then. He paused, halfway from here to nowhere, and gave Alex a knowing look.
“When I first met Miss Muir, she talked about you, though in no great detail,” John said. “She did mention, however, that she had given you this opportunity before. She pinned her hopes on you, and my understanding is that she was disappointed.” Alex looked at the broken gun on the carpet, now a pool of molten metal that was burning his carpet. “You did not save her – no, that isn’t quite it, is it? You chose not to save Miss Muir, and she paid a horrible price for that choice. I will forever be haunted by the sob she did not quite choke back, Mr. Warner, when we fit the lid on the well where we drowned her.”
John laughed, and took another step, and Alex was alone in the dorm, only a rancid odor left to remind him the Anathema had just been there.
You failed Emily once, and she’s done so much for you since then, John said, his telepathic presence lingering along with his stench. Don’t you think you owe her better? The Changeling is doomed, and she dooms many others with her selfishness. Ask Ériu if you don’t believe me. She’ll tell you the same.
***
“Sorry that took so long,” Eerie said, panting as she entered the gym. “There are no candy machines at the Far Shores, for some reason, so I had to go to the commissary, and then wait until no one was paying attention, because the snack cabinet is off limits, or at least that’s what the rule used to be, but now that it all belongs to Emily, I don’t think it really counts, do you? It’s just candy, and anyway, I need it. You see? Well, you need it. Or I need it, to help you. Maybe that’s better?”
“I’m not particularly worried about the snack cabinet rules,” Mitsuru said. “I’ll deal with any trouble that comes from it.”
“Okay,” Eerie said, unwrapping a sucker and popping it in her mouth. “Give me a second.”
Mitsuru waited, while Eerie worked on the candy.
“Are you just going to eat candy, or are you going to help me?”
“I am helping,” Eerie said. “Just a moment!”
Eerie took the candy from her mouth, glistening and wet, and examined it closely. Seemingly satisfied, she nodded, and then offered it to Mitsuru.
“What am I supposed to do with this?” Mitsuru eyed the sucker on its damp stick. “I don’t like candy.”
“That’s weird and wrong,” Eerie declared. “Candy is the best!”
“Eerie, what are we doing here?”
“I can’t help you with my protocol, but I can help you, uh, I don’t want to say it!” Eerie lowered her voice. “It’s biological, Ms. Aoki. You need the candy.”
Mitsuru shrugged and took the candy from Eerie, holding it at a distasteful distance.
“Put it in your mouth,” Eerie said, miming the action, as if encouraging a child to eat vegetables. “You have to.”
Feeling very strange about the whole thing, Mitsuru did as she was told.
The candy was still wet when she put her tongue on it, and it tasted strongly of synthetic watermelon, which Mitsuru did not enjoy.
Mitsuru sucked on the lollipop, while Eerie watched her closely, with a very strange look on her already strange face.
“Eerie?” Mitsuru took the sucker from her mouth. “You wouldn’t happen to be playing a joke on me, would you?”
“No way, Ms. Aoki! I wouldn’t know how, really,” Eerie said, flinching away. “Jokes are weird. Anyway, you scare me.”
Mitsuru put the candy back in her mouth.
“What happens now?”
“Give it a minute,” Eerie said. “You’ll know.”
***
“Oh, hello, Alex,” Emily said, screwing shut the top on a mason jar filled with salad. “I was just putting together something for lunch. All that time in Las Vegas and I never thought to order room service. Are you hungry? Oh, dear. You look upset.”
“He told me,” Alex said, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his hoodie. “Is it true?”
“Who is he?”
“John Parson, that’s fucking who. Is it true?”
“I don’t know,” Emily said, spreading aioli on sliced levain. “What did he tell you?”
“He told me you would disintegrate at the end of the week,” Alex said, speaking loudly over the buzzing in his ears. “Because of the Church, or something. He said he was part of it, and…”
“Oh, yes,” Emily said, wiping her hands on a towel. “That.”
“Is it true?”
“It could be,” Emily said. “There’s no way to be sure, but Marcus thinks that will happen, and I trust him.”
“You should have told me,” Alex said, pacing the kitchen. “Right away.”
“I didn’t want to make things more difficult for you and Eerie, and anyway, I can take care of myself. No one else has ever done it for me, you see,” Emily said, carefully cutting neat slices from leftover turkey breast. “There’s nothing that you can do about it, can you? So, there was no point in worrying you.”
“Maybe I can’t do anything, but Eerie could. That’s what he said.”
“You mean that Eerie could return to the Church before it manifests,” Emily said, her back to him, so he could not see her face. “She could give up everything, even her last few days in the world, so the Anathema might continue on for however long it amuses John Parson to allow it.”
“Yeah. I mean, she could, right? That could happen.”
“I suppose that she could,” Emily said slowly, layering sliced vegetables on top of the turkey. “But why would she do that? She’s spent her whole life trying to plan an escape from that very thing. Why would she give up her chance, however small, at freedom, to help me?”
“He said there’s no chance,” Alex admitted. “The same as Gaul, and Eerie’s sister, Samnang, in the Outer Dark. Alistair, too. They all claim that Eerie is screwed.”
“Well, they would say that,” Emily said, slicing the sandwiches in half. “They want her to pacify the Church.”
“That doesn’t mean they’re wrong,” Alex said. “Are they?”
Emily stacked the sandwiches neatly, her back to Alex.
“No,” she said, very quietly. “I don’t think that they are.”
“I don’t think so either,” Alex said. “Eerie offered to do it herself once already, you know.”
“Now that she’s so close, she’s more afraid of losing you than losing herself. That’s understandable. This all probably seemed easier in the abstract, but now that it is all here, I don’t blame her for wavering.”
Alex rested his hands on Emily’s shoulders, ready to move away if she objected.
She did not object. She remained perfectly still.
“I don’t want to lose either of you,” Alex said.
“That was never an option, was it?” Emily leaned back against his chest. “It was always one or the other of us, right from the start. That was the whole idea. My mother told me when you came to Central that this would be my last chance, and she was right. Despite everything I’ve done, she was right.”
“I’m not just giving Eerie to whatever the Church of Sleep is supposed to be. But I don’t want to lose you for nothing, either.”
Emily sighed and pushed him away to tidy the kitchen.
“That’s your dilemma, not mine,” Emily said. “What do expect me to do?”
“I want a straight answer. I need to know that there is a chance that I can save Eerie,” Alex said, coming to stand behind her. “Can it really be done?”
“Th
ere’s always a chance,” Emily said. “Always.”
“A realistic chance?” Alex asked, his hands hovering near Emily, but not actually touching her. “Are you saying that we can fight the Church of Sleep?”
“Of course not,” Emily said, dumping the scraps in the sink. “You might as well try and pick a fight with the sun, trying to stop it from rising.”
“I don’t know,” Alex said, trying to rub the cold out of his artificial eye. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot and practicing in my free time. I’m not just going to roll over, you know?”
“I know, and I’ve noticed,” Emily said, smiling at him. “Not to diminish your hard work, because we have problems aside from the Church, and I’ll need your help, but you are misunderstanding. The worry isn’t that we will fight the Church and lose, it’s that it can’t be fought at all. It’s just not possible.”
“How can that be? How do they…?”
“I’m going to stop you there, and just tell you that I don’t know. I know that Marcus is sure, and I trust Marcus. Eerie is certain of it, and who would doubt her? I know that John Parson and Gaul Thule think the same, and while I don’t trust either of them, the consensus is enough for me. The Church simply doesn’t have an existence to oppose. It would be like trying to pick a fight with your shadow.”
“They can take Eerie, though. Somehow.”
“Yes. They will operate through Representatives, that’s what Marcus said. The Church will come, and John will become who he really is, which is no one, and the Anathema will turn to dust. The Church will appoint Representatives, and they will take her away, to something they call the White Room, where she will wither away. That is what will happen.”
“Not necessarily.”
“You asked me to tell you how it is, and I’m doing just that. It’s only fair. If I must live with it, then so should you,” Emily said, rinsing the pans in the sink. “Gaul Thule will take over Central while it is isolated, and the Director and whatever is left of the Hegemony will try to stop him. Anastasia will find a way to invade Central eventually, and between those two events, Central will be depopulated.”
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 48