The Malice Box

by Martin Langfield

  ‘We’re just about there,’ the driver said over the limousine’s intercom. ‘Maiden Lane. A pleasure to drive you this morning.’

  The limousine drew to a halt and they got out. The sky was pulsing white now to Robert’s eyes. He tried to feel out with his mind towards Adam, towards Terri, but found nothing.

  The Federal Reserve Bank of New York was across the street, just a couple of blocks east of Broadway. There was more gold there than anywhere in the world, even Fort Knox. Robert had visited its underground vaults, cut into the bedrock of Manhattan, and seen the ingots stacked there in unmarked cages. Now it housed enough red gold to help the Iwnw kill millions of people.

  Could that be where the Ma’rifat’ was located? It would be impossible to breach, he thought. And he had no recollection of the underground spaces being curved or arched.

  He took out the Quad and tried to locate Waypoint 63, but nonsensical data filled the GPS display screen. The directional arrow swung wildly.

  ‘Kat, are you getting any impression of Adam, or Terri? Or the Iwnw?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  But at the corner of Maiden Lane, just as they were about to head towards the Fed, Katherine stopped dead in her tracks outside a jeweller’s. Robert saw a wraith of yellow light reflected in the shop window. Then it moved to surround Katherine. She breathed in sharply, her whole posture changing.

  ‘Time and space beneathmy feet,’ she said. Except it wasn’t her voice.

  ‘Terri?’

  There was a clock set into the sidewalk under Katherine’s feet, surrounded by a brass ring marked with compass points for north, south, east and west.

  ‘I see where you are. Look north. Look for the four elements.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Downtown. Hidden away. Underground. Pain.’

  ‘We’re coming to get you, Terri. Where did he go?’

  ‘Curved. Arches. Can’t see.’

  She gave a sudden shriek. ‘Iwnw are here. Burning! Oh, God, burning! Come quickly!’

  Then she was gone. Katherine slumped, breathing deeply, hands on her knees. She spat. ‘God damn it! What was that?’

  He held her shoulders, but she twisted away.

  ‘Terri came into you. Are you all right?’

  She shivered, trying to recover her composure.

  ‘Did she say where she was? That was foul. It hurt.’

  ‘She tried to guide us. Said go north, look for the four elements.’

  The north arrow on the clock in the sidewalk pointed towards the old AT & T Building at 19 5 Broadway. They ran to it. Along the Broadway frontage were four panels in gold leaf on black: a bare-breasted woman of distinctly earthy allure, surrounded by vegetation; a young man disporting himself among birds; another young man, wrapped in flame; a sea sprite of sinuous beauty. Earth. Air. Fire. Water.

  Robert reached out again for Terri. He remembered the luxuriant, sensual yellow of the double lover who’d split off from Terri’s body to seduce him at the hotel. Achingly beautiful, sex made light. He found her. Except now she was racked with pain and fear. The figure of the man in flames was resonating in her. He felt cancer spreading through her body. He felt her raging anger at the Iwnw, her forlorn prayers for Adam. Fear for the world. She was seeing the world burning, not just herself. Gently, he coaxed her back towards them, away from her pain. He saw a fleeting image of where she was, a beautiful glass oculus above her head like the eye of death itself. Then he lost it.

  ‘Kat, I’m going to try to draw Terri back to us. Can you take her inside you again if she can do it again?’

  Katherine nodded reluctantly. ‘I’ll try not to resist this time. I’ll try to help her sustain it.’

  Robert sought out Terri more strongly, feeling a powerful blocking presence around her. His mind was being diverted from a location he knew well. Suddenly it was a maddening experience. He knew the place where the Ma’rifat’ was located, he realized. He had even been there. But it was so powerfully shielded he could not see it at all, even in his own mind.

  ‘If they need to kill a Unicorn to achieve the level of conflagration they desire, it makes no sense for them to block the location from me,’ he said to Katherine. ‘Why?’

  ‘It only makes sense if they’re not ready for you yet. If they’re not yet confident of being able to defeat you. They must be building their strength. Maybe drawing on the power of the red gold. Accumulating energy.’

  ‘Then Terri has to guide us there before they’re ready. That’s what she’s trying to do. She thinks we still have a chance of stopping this.’

  ‘Bring her to me. I’m ready.’

  Robert sought Terri again and found her sneaking past the Iwnw’s psychic barriers. He harmonized his consciousness with hers and gently drew her into Katherine, who shuddered slightly, then nodded.

  ‘North,’ Terri said, speaking through Katherine’s mouth. ‘North. Cure Mary. Cure Mary.’

  They walked past St Paul’s Chapel, past the obelisk, and crossed Broadway towards City Hall Park. He supported Katherine on his arm.

  Terri came hurtling through now, deep-breathing, hoarse. ‘Curare? Plaque, by a tree… Cure? Cure Mary? Oh, God… find it… put it together… it hurts…’

  He scoured the trees in the park beyond the railings, heading north. Then he saw what Terri meant: a small black metal plaque near the foot of a tree, honouring Marie Sklodowska Curie, dated 1934. Marie Curie. Cure Mary. Curare. Cure me.

  He saw what Terri was doing. She was guiding them to her location, through images of the coming horror. Marie Curie. Radioactivity. X-rays. Atomic.

  And an image came into his mind, raging and powerful, of the eye of death staring up from Lower Manhattan, firing bolts of blue-and-yellow light into the sky, a shock-wave of hatred and fear spreading at impossible speed across the face of the globe.

  ‘It hurts so much,’ Terri moaned. ‘Robert. Walk north… 270. Walk north. 270.’

  ‘Is that a waypoint? Waypoint 270?’

  ‘No! Street… Number 270… Street… Manhattan… Oh, fuck, burning, oh, God, burning…’

  He saw it. 270 Broadway, at the south-west corner of Broadway and Chambers, was an office building of some twenty storeys, white brick above and riveted black iron girders below, housing a bank. Robert wondered what she could mean.

  ‘Terri?’

  Katherine was shaking with fear now. He willed her to hold on to Terri for just a few moments longer.

  ‘Terri, are you sure?’

  No reply. Just a keening note of pain.

  The building displayed heavy black rivets in its beams that reminded him of the heavy black bolts on the bell at St Mark’s. The strongbox at the lock collection.

  And suddenly the bell began to toll in his mind. It was a death knell. The bolts were like those he had seen on photos of Fat Man and Little Boy, the first atomic bombs used in anger.

  He took out the Quad and googled the address. It got him a series of internet items of no discernible interest. He added ‘Marie Curie’ to the search.

  Holy fuck. Only one entry came up. It contained the phrase ‘Manhattan Project’. Number 270 on Broadway was the first home of the drive to build an atomic bomb during World War Two. The Manhattan Project had been housed on this site before being shipped off to Los Alamos, Oak Ridge and other points south and west. This was where it had begun.

  Fat Man. Fat Mary. Cure Mary. Cure me.

  ‘Robert… City Hall… back to City Hall.’

  They were just yards from the early-nineteenth-century City Hall building itself, where the mayor had his offices. There was something on the tip of his tongue. His mind screamed at him to remember.

  ‘Almost under your feet,’ Terri said. ‘Hidden. Under your feet. Find it.’

  Terri gave a final scream and abandoned Katherine’s body. Katherine dropped to her knees and retched.

  And then the Iwnw’s shield suddenly fell.

  An abandoned subway station. Disused. Curved. Arched
. The old City Hall Station. It was what his mind had been screaming at him to recall. Closed to the public for more than fifty years. The first station on the first subway line in New York, and still the most beautiful. It was directly below City Hall.

  The Quad buzzed. It was Horace.

  ‘I see it. I suddenly saw it. The old City Hall Station!’

  ‘I know. I see it too.’

  ‘This means they are ready for you now. Confident.’

  ‘I’m ready for them too.’

  Katherine stood back up, anger and unshakeable willpower flaring from her.

  Horace asked if he knew how to get there.

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I’ll be praying for you. Giving you all the power I can.’

  ‘I know, old friend. I have to go.’

  ‘One thing, Robert. You still cannot involve the authorities in any way. The Ma’rifat’ would detonate. You understand? Their fear and anger would set it off. This has to be handled by a Unicorn. It is between the Perfect Light and the Iwnw.’

  ‘I understand.’

  Katherine took the Quad from him. ‘Horace, thank you for everything. We’re going to get them now. We’ll save as many people as we can.’

  The City Hall Station had been closed originally because it was underused, too small and too curved for the new longer trains. Then the public had been barred from it for security reasons. It was used only as a loop to turn around the trains at the end of the Number 6 line. Despite the security rules, though, Robert’s enthusiasm for gems of New York architecture had twice led him to sneak a peek at the station by hiding on board a turning train. He knew that it had two levels: a platform by the tracks and, above it, an elegant domed ticket hall.

  He took Katherine’s hand in his, hefting in the other hand the steel pipe Horace had given him. Her strength seemed to leave her, and he half carried her east along Chambers Street, past the Tweed Courthouse, heading for the other side of City Hall Park and the Number 6 subway.

  An elegant dark green elevator, domed in the Budapest style and looking faintly like an old-fashioned British police box, stood on the esplanade on the eastern side of City Hall.

  ‘The entrance to hell,’ he said to Katherine. ‘Who knew?’

  The elevator went down one floor and opened directly opposite the turnstiles. Katherine was reviving. She was able to walk under her own steam as they headed for the Downtown & Brooklyn platform and went down the steps.

  They waited for the local 6 train. When it pulled in, a booming voice over the PA system told everyone to get off. Standing halfway along the platform, Robert and Katherine waited till the last possible moment, then leaped aboard just as the doors were closing and ducked down. The train jolted into motion, screeching against the curving rails, and headed into the darkened tunnel. They moved along the train to the rear as it went. When it stopped in the darkness, they stepped from the couplings of the last car on to the platform. The train pulled away.

  Robert and Katherine crouched at the furthest corner of the abandoned station and waited for their eyes to get used to the gloom.

  Ahead of them, dimly lit by chandeliers and ornate glass skylights, stretched a curved platform and a procession of ribbed arches. Glazed tiles in dark green, cream and dark brown dressed the walls. Attenuated blue light streamed in from the skylights. It was a magical loop, a lost station, a ghostly, sad, beautiful place.

  Robert looked for straight lines and found none. His eyes lost themselves in the shadows and curves. An insistent, throbbing note resonated from the walls, insinuating its way into his mind. He could feel the evil presence of the Iwnw in every atom of his body. Up ahead he could make out the mouth of a stairway, leading up towards the ticket hall. A sickly yellow glow emanated from it, punctuated by flickers of red-and-blue light. They were the colours of the eye of death.

  He heard water dripping, and the sound of feet moving on stone up ahead. Slowly and deliberately, in the semi-darkness, he crept forward. Katherine was right behind him, hugging the wall.

  The glowing lights up ahead changed tone, modulating to a darker yellow as the throbbing bass tone dropped in pitch, dipping to the very edge of his hearing range. He felt himself drawn to the play of light, even as the infrasound of the Ma’rifat’ triggered primal fears in the depths of his mind. The lights were beautiful, seductive.

  A few yards along the platform, pushed against the wall, lay a dark, elongated form. Robert sneaked towards it, fearing he knew what it was. He ran his right hand over it. He felt a sticky wet pool of liquid, and the metallic smell of blood flooded his senses. He tried to find a pulse at the throat and found instead a gaping knife wound. He pulled his fingers away involuntarily, stifling a cry of horror. For a moment he couldn’t breathe. Then he composed himself and felt down to the body’s waist. He found an equipment belt, a holster, but no pistol or radio.

  ‘Cop,’ he whispered. ‘Dead.’

  He reached up to the eyes and closed them. The body was still warm. He seemed to be a young man. Would he have to check in every few minutes? How long before he was missed?

  Katherine briefly said a prayer over the body, then they moved cautiously along the platform.

  The soft sounds of sacred chanting now reached their ears, melding with the deep, otherworldly resonance that echoed in the very tiles and stones of the beautiful cavern. Horace was right to call it the most female space imaginable. The skylights were like rose windows, their beautiful tracery like veins under white skin.

  They were at the edge of the steps rising up into the domed ticket bootharea. Robert slowly looked around the corner, keeping his head as low and hidden in shadow as possible. The upper chamber’s arches culminated in a skylight overhead like a single staring eye, the one he had seen in a flicker of an image from Terri.

  And, in the centre of the room, directly under the skylight, Robert saw the Ma’rifat’. It was beautiful. A translucent drum of gold and white, it spun slowly, pulsing from within, geometric designs and decorative script shining in different colours as its rims rotated above and below in opposite directions. It stood about four feet off the ground, atop a tapering column of what looked like solid gold. On a clothon the ground next to it were some metallic shapes. A seven-pointed star design, a hexagon, a pyramid, a tiny round drum. The Malice Box that Adam had mailed to him. The core. The master key.

  ‘Fat Mary,’ Robert whispered. ‘The Ma’rifat’. The Malice Box.’

  He climbed slowly to his feet, taking care not to scrape the metal staff he carried on the ground. He heard a footstep behind them, a shuffle and a cry from Katherine. Then his head lit up with pain, and he collapsed, unconscious.

  The eye stared into Robert’s soul. He prayed.

  … turn fear into love…

  Shapes and fragments of city scenes played before his eyes.

  … mind like a mirror…

  Lines of light and longing, lust and fear.

  … merciful heart…

  He reached out with his mind. It was the gift he had buried for more than twenty years, singing out into the unseen space around him, listening in return. It was a gradual erosion of the separateness of things. He felt everything bathed in a beautiful, barely visible light.

  A man’s voice rang out. Rasping. Exhausted. ‘Robert.’

  The one who’d attacked him on the subway. The same distorted bark.

  It was time to fight. He was ready. He cast his mind far into the past.

  … forgive him…

  Robert opened his eyes. Directly across from him stood a figure in black, a man, breathless, crouching. His face was hidden, but Robert knew him, knew the stance, the familiar crossing of the arms across the chest, the lowered head.

  ‘Adam,’ he said.

  Adam looked up, only his eyes showing in the darkness. Behind him, Robert could make out other shadowy figures. Three wraiths in black cowls softly chanted words he had never heard but that penetrated his heart with darkness. Beside them, a few feet to his left, h
e saw a slumped form on stone steps. Terri. He could see a red nimbus of pain around the head and stomach.

  ‘Rickles,’ Adam rasped, a note of fear in his voice. Then, gathering his composure, ‘We meet again. For the last time, I think.’

  His voice echoed in the great curved space around them. ‘You are no longer Adam. You’ve killed Adam. You are evil. You’re just another henchman of the Iwnw.’

  ‘They work through me. But I am, just, still the Adam you all know and love.’

  ‘If so, I can help you.’

  ‘So you can. Though perhaps not in the way you imagine. We come to “a great reckoning in a little room”. It is my destiny, it seems.’

  ‘From As You Like It?’

  ‘Yes, though I do not like it at all.’

  ‘Where is Katherine?’

  ‘Out cold, I’m afraid.’ Adam pointed out of Robert’s eyeshot. ‘She’s not hurt, though. Not yet.’

  A train screeched by below like a banshee. He saw that the Ma’rifat’ dimmed its glow and stilled its deep throb until it had gone.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking. There are fairly regular police visits down here. The Iwnw had to kill the last cop who came round. But I’ve moved his body now. No one will find us. Not in time. And, if they did, they would just set it off. Not in the way my masters wish, though. Hence the rather more elaborate preparations we’ve made.’

  ‘I won’t help you.’

  ‘Robert, Robert. You don’t realize who you are, do you?’

  ‘Who I am?’

  ‘In a sense, you are the weapon. We have gathered everything needed to detonate the Device at its full potential. All the keys. The core, the trigger. The red gold warehoused near by. But we can’t do it alone. The final component is a Unicorn. A being of great beauty and power of spirit, sacrificed by the Iwnw. Which is to say… you, Robert. It’s what you’ve always been. What you’ve always denied. Why I sought you out all those years ago. Why Katherine sought refuge with you.’

  ‘I won’t do it.’

  ‘You will. We will fight, and the Iwnw who work through me, who compel me, will compel you. You will break, and you will die. You will have no choice. And, in dying, you will detonate the Malice Box.’