So without sounds, without light, without smell or sense, she drifted, staring into the darkness, wondering when the ground before her would light by her own eyes. When the cell lit again, she thought that she was finally dying, that she had succumbed. That all was well.
From the edge of the room, shoes scraped over rust and the woman got to her feet, breaking the silence and stepping into the light. It wasn’t Ming who died, but someone else. Ming wondered if she wanted to go, whether she was ready. Unable to recall what life was like in a home, in a family, without torture.
“Yes! Yes!” the woman said giddily, then biting her fist, her eyes wet with excitement.
Ming tried to see who died, tried to count off those who had already been stabbed or had their throat slit.
“Not, Alistair … no.”
“Shhh!” the woman ordered.
But Ming didn’t care.
The light grew. She tried to ignore its radiance, suspecting that such luminosity could only come from purity. And that the only one she knew who was pure enough was a little boy in penny loafers.
“Evil, soul stealer,” Ming croaked, the words issuing more clearly in her mind than from her mouth. “Alistair, please …”
The light went out, snuffed like a candle’s flame. The woman growled in the deep black. In Ming the darkness kindled a faint hope that Alistair was not dead. That he’d heard. Slow steps stopped before Ming.
“No, my little friend … I don’t steal souls, I free them. For I am Theudas.”
Chapter 34
Charlie gripped the crystal in a tight fist and held it to his lips.
“I’m here, Charlie’s back,” he tried to say, but fluid filled his mouth, garbling the words. His lungs gave a hump of displeasure, and he looked upward. No surface rippled that he could make out, and below, assuming he was right side up, the darkness didn’t deepen. The same gray black that surrounded him continued on into the depth of this new sea.
Despite being submerged, his sight was clear. A distant, winking glow drew his attention. He swam toward it, making sweeping strokes with his arms and fluttering his feet. His robe billowed about him. Soon Hillar began to materialize; he was flailing and covered in brown-red fuzz. Something itched over Charlie’s skin, and he scratched at his wrist, his nails removing a thin layer of skin. A prickle of fear ran up his spine as the curl of skin dissolved into the fluid, and the graze beneath his nails burned.
Closer, the brown-red fuzz surrounding Hillar clarified; pieces of flesh melted from him. Charlie’s lungs pumped with the urge to breathe. But Hillar, who had been in this deep several minutes longer, had not drowned; he was all too conscious during the dissolution of his body. Charlie’s itching began to sear.
Hillar’s face sloughed from the bone, lingering tendons waving like worms in the fluid. The shine of his chest grew as the clothing disintegrated into filaments, and the skin peeled back to muscle. In the fluid, Hillar’s scream was dull and distorted.
When the agony set in, Charlie concentrated on it. He recognized the pain, and he pushed the signals sent by his synapses into the background of his thoughts, separating himself from the blistering flesh. Charlie floated. His penis liquefied. His nails slipped from his fingertips. Bony knuckles and elbow pierced through his skin, which swirled into the fluid and was gone.
While Charlie separated from the pain, Hillar was engulfed by it. His agony twisted his massive form and spun him about. Hillar’s tendons snapped at the shoulder, and one skeletal hand grasped after the drifting other. His jaw unhinged, forever extending his terrible, silent scream.
Watching Hillar, Charlie knew he’d entered the final deep. The last chance for gnosis lay here, before his consciousness split into a billion component parts. Gnosis was in this deep and the knowledge of the deeps that came before.
One by one, Charlie’s finger bones—the distal, then middle and proximal phalanges—scattered from the metacarpals, and in the tumbling pattern of knucklebones, his fortune was plain. The crystal fell with them and dropped into the darkness, but Charlie did not swim after it. He couldn’t. His foot fell from the ankle, but the agony was a distant thrum of electrical current, present, acknowledged, but compartmentalized.
As his ribcage unhinged from the sternum, it gaped slowly like a door long shut, creaking open to let the caustic wash chew into organs. Each rib twisted off and down; the marrow suspended for a second before dissipating.
All that remained of Hillar was a somber, orange ember.
All that remained of Charlie was a single sphere, blue like the glow of the sun shining through an iceberg. Charlie watched the last of himself vanish.
“All I am is a goddamn spark,” he said, and to his surprise, the words sounded aloud.
The hell you know is the hell you’ll see, what you feel is what you’ll be, the hell you know is the hell you’ll see …
And he recalled the excavation of his chest. The taste of maggot. The agony of hook sea, of wolves, of bone-bats. The breaking of vows and of trusts. The rejection of his family and the love of Angelica.
Are we so different? Hillar had asked.
Charlie accepted that the distance between Hillar and himself was subtle and blurred. That, in Charlie, Jo might have actually convinced a young Theudas that he was Valentinus. The bond was the same.
Charlie Harkman had killed through inaction, inaction born of spite and ego. He embraced his own lusts and passions; he knew himself and what remained and finally, he let it all go.
“Family, love, flesh, all gone. All that is left is …”
The light from his spark began to slowly grow, a radiance as well as a lightness of being. A new star.
“All that is left … is me.”
Chapter 35
Deeth, pale and visibly disturbed, had thundered into the general’s office. From beyond the glass came the low timbre of his voice as he struggled for an audience with the president. In Purgatory, the general’s eyes shifted left and right. He picked through Deeth’s vials.
On my upturned wrist were the names of the Archons: Iao, Yaldabaoth, Samuel, Abrasax, surrounded by Gnostic symbols. Attila looped the second doorknob around my neck—I tried not to think about how it had just been around Morph’s.
“Again, although this may be written in indelible marker, it doesn’t mean it’ll be waiting for you in hell,” he reminded me.
“I have to try. I’m not a murderer,” I said.
“Yeah, well, I don’t want to abet one, either.” Attila’s eyes traveled to the general and back.
“I’m dying either way.” I looked at him with pleading eyes. “Help me make it worthwhile. Please.”
He gulped and nodded.
The general didn’t know how to put the saline lock in and so would need to inject the needle directly into my vein. He plunged the needle into the first vial, the shot that would put me into a coma. When he pulled the needle out, it gave a little spurt and sprayed across my t-shirt, joining with fresh blood from my nose. A rubber band tied about my bicep strangled my veins and made them easy targets.
Attila’s hand shook, and he buried it in the sheets and leaned on it, but that only caused his arm to quake.
“Let’s get on with this,” the general urged as if, having agreed to complete the job, was now eager to be done with it. The needle quavered, but unlike Attila, I suspected the general’s shakes were due to excitement rather than distress. “I’ll be seeing you soon, I bet.”
I looked up at the general, not understanding his meaning. His blue eyes were tight with fear.
I didn’t care what the general had to say, but I still wanted to piss him off. “I’m not scared to die, General.”
His jaw flexed, and he tilted his head to glare at me. In a swift movement, he grabbed my wrist and jammed the needle into my arm.
Attila’s hand shot to his head and clutched
it. “Hold!”
But the general wasn’t stopping and even I suspected Attila’s interjection to be a ruse. Realizing he’d missed the vein, the general retreated the needle and attacked again. Attila’s eyes rolled back into his skull, something I’d never before seen, and I wasn’t sure it was possible to fake the sudden loss of expression on his face. When the general thrust the syringe at my forearm, I twisted enough against the restraining straps that the needle went in through muscle.
“Hold still, goddamn it!” the general hollered.
In the general’s office, the phone crashed to the floor. The slap of running steps rang out.
Blood flowed freely from the needle pricks on my arm.
“Stop!” Attila cried, returning to lucidity.
The general knelt on my arm, so that I couldn’t possibly shift away.
Attila’s fist crashed against the general’s jaw, knocking him from the bed. And in the general’s fumbles to regain my wrist, I grasped his thumb, bent it backward and drove him to his knees.
The anger in the general’s eyes was clear, and I could see how much he feared dying. How much he desired to cheat death. How much he hated me for wanting to throw my life away, the gifts he’d given, and this the only way he could take it back for himself. I saw in him what I would become if my guilt festered for decades. Ruined and embittered.
Attila rubbed his fist. “Charlie’s back.”
Deeth flung himself into the room through the door and secured a hold on the general that allowed me to release his thumb. The general sagged in Deeth’s arms. The doctor’s biceps bulged out from the cuffs of his scrubs, and he delivered a wide grin.
“Welcome back, everyone,” he said.
I let my body relax, eyes drifting to the ceiling. I was glad to hear from Charlie, but mainly I felt relief that I would not be dying yet, relief tinged with regret and a guilt that I was going to have to deal with some other way.
I watched the general, whose eyes refused to look into mine, and I suspected why he wanted me dead. It wasn’t that I was a rogue terminal. Or that I was uncovering the secrets to his organization. No, he hated me because I’d rejected him. I’d refused him. Having saved me from the brink of death, he wanted to own a piece of me, to be my acknowledged godfather. And I wouldn’t let that happen.
But if he had wanted me to live, then why recruit me in the first place?
“I’m a spark,” Charlie repeated and shook a head that wasn’t there. He continued to swell with light until he couldn’t see for its glare. The light encompassed Hillar and dispelled the surrounding darkness.
Charlie began to throb. It was an odd feeling, to expand and contract, to be the pulse of life. Out from himself, he stretched. Aorta and superior vena cava, then pulmonary arteries, until he was a tangle of ropey flesh. He surged and clenched.
Charlie laughed and about himself he wrapped muscle, and through the muscle he pushed bone and banded sinew, threading himself together into an illusion of godhood. He added scales and feathers—it didn’t matter—and sweeping black hair and eyes that saw in all directions. Runes flared across his armored muscles, and his gun was a cannon embedded in his wrist. He lined his mouth with teeth, and he capped his scalp with a single horn, like that of a narwhal. Now a whimsical juggernaut, he swept great arms out toward Hillar.
Hillar, seeing what Charlie had become, tried to reform himself but only managed a misshapen mouth attached to what appeared to be a slimy, athletic sock. Sensing his failure, he elongated, eel-like, with beady eyes slotted above a snub-nosed mouth.
Charlie reached out with a great, clawed hand and clutched Hillar. But Hillar slipped between the talons and wriggled free. Charlie’s hand became a mesh, and he reached out and scooped Hillar into its netting. The killer gnashed at the line, but it held, and Charlie tangled its tail in the net. He gathered the creature and held him before his eye.
“Now, Hillar,” Charlie said. “Where are the children?”
Hillar gnashed his needle-sharp teeth as he spoke: “It seems we both have something to trade.” The glassy, marble eyes glinted.
“The connection is so strong!” Attila blurted as he focused on the small globe of glass, leaning on the bed for support.
The general retreated to his office, but he did so with a straight back and stoic chin; the war was not yet won. Deeth had freed me from the restraints, and I had taken up the pad of paper and pen and copied down Attila’s responses while sitting on the cot. The blood from the pricks of my right arm continued to flow, and I left prints with my fist on the yellow paper.
Deeth glanced at the blood with a raised eyebrow as he tidied away his instruments.
I moved my hand from where I copied the letters.
Have you found the kids? Charlie asked.
Attila looked at me around the crystal doorknob.
“Tell him, no,” I said.
Attila nodded, and soon after began dictating another series of letters.
Then I must.
“Must what?” I wondered aloud, but Attila was still relaying the communication.
Do a better job next time … I’ll stay really close.
Something was wrong; a decision was being made that was potentially bigger.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“He’s making some sort of trade,” Attila replied. “Why else would he ask if we’ve found the kids?”
“But what could he have to trade?”
“Hold on, there is more. He’s talking to Hillar, not us!” Attila said. “I. W. I. L. L.”
I will trade you another turn on Earth’s wheel.
I copied madly, recalling Angelica’s desperation to exchange her life to ensure this wouldn’t happen.
I will give you gnosis, but first—the children.
“Hillar hasn’t discovered gnosis; he’s stuck in the deeps; he can’t reincarnate!” I explained to Attila. “Tell him, don’t do it!” I was up out of the bed and holding Attila’s cupped hands in my own. From my elbows, drops of blood shook to the floor. At the outset I would have done anything to complete the mission, but I was beginning to understand that sacrifices could be made for the greater good. It was what the unit was about. “You can break the cycle, Charlie!”
“Unless you’re a psychic now, he can’t hear you,” Attila said. “And I won’t tell him. Not when the lives of children are at stake.”
“Three days. It’s already been three days,” I said.
“And you’re to decide?” Attila challenged. “They’re not all dead. I know it for a fact.”
I gasped. Of course, Attila could talk to the dead. Which meant some of them were dead.
“How many are left?” I asked.
He shrugged. “I get images. Darkness. Blood.”
“But they don’t know where they are, or were?” I scratched at my head.
“My connection with them is weak. Only that it was dark, and there was a ladder.”
“Sewer?” I asked.
Attila shrugged. “So what are we going to tell Charlie?”
“You’re right,” I said. “It’s time we start letting people make decisions for themselves.” In the mirror, my lips were purple, my pallor mottled. “If we want to be better than the Nazis.”
Deeth gave a slow nod.
Attila sniffed and nodded agreement, before focusing on the crystal.
“The children,” he said finally. “Charlie wants to help the children.”
“All right,” I replied. “We will try to save the kids.”
“Quick, give me the pad of paper,” Attila waved his free hand for the pad. His eyes were closed like he tried to hold the remnant of a dream within them. “This can’t be translated.”
I handed him the pad and pen and he hunched over it, scribbling madly, and then carefully lettering the picture. When he stood, I
saw it.
A happy face and the slogan: Fiends of Opportunity.
And I dropped to my knees, knowing I’d seen that same symbol before. I took up my iPhone and held my breath for the screen to turn on. I searched through the video clips, pulling up the one I had shown to Charlie three days ago. The governor delivered his plea to the news networks. Over his shoulder was the same happy face emblazoned on the water tower. The phone searched for a signal.
“I know where this is,” I shouted and raced into the general’s office to use the landline. “You bastard,” I said as I entered.
He stared at me stonily, but silently. I grabbed the phone and dialed Volt.
On the desk, in a large Ziploc, was a medical kit of some sort, and it caught my eye only because it hadn’t been there before amongst the clutter. I contemplated it as Volt’s phone rang. Three long glass tubes with a cotton swab held in the middle by a red stopper. Latex gloves. Dental floss. A urine sample container. Over the top of the bag was a yellow sticker that read: Police Evidence.
“What the hell is this?” I demanded.
Whoever was on the other end picked up the phone.
“Hello? This is Colonel Kurzow.”
They hung up.
I swore and dialed again.
Someone came on the line, and I heard the scratch of grizzly cheeks over the mouthpiece.
“Agent Volt, I have new information,” I said in a rush.
He breathed heavily into the phone before answering. “I said, we’re not interested.”
“How can you—” I cried.
“The search has been downgraded, Colonel.”
“But it’s not too late,” I said.
“You have my statement. You’ve had your two tries.”
“This isn’t some story about crying wolf!”
“What’s your source, Colonel,” he said. “Tell me your source.”
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