by J. C. Nelson
“No.” Brynner shook his head. “I can’t hand you a weapon—”
I tried to pull my Deliverator out, but my hands shook, and my eyes blurred with tears. Brynner took it from me.
“Please, I beg of you, end this while I can still decide.” Dr. Thomas looked over to me. “Don’t give up, Grace. Keep asking questions and pursuing answers. Curiosity is our most powerful weapon.”
He closed his eyes, his free hand clenched into a fist. “I’m ready.”
Brynner pulled me toward him, and fired, over and over. The gunshots echoed through Vault Zero.
“Grace Roberts, are you safe?” Amy’s voice from my lab called me back from the cloud of regret and fear. “Were you attacked by the old one?”
Brynner rose, leaving me on the floor. “It’s dead. Not escaped.”
Amy trotted down the hall. “Ra-Ame’s foot soldiers were not known for mercy.”
Brynner winced. “What did you call that thing?”
“A foot soldier. A single member of her army, sent to do her bidding. If the legends are true, her forces number in the thousands.” Amy beckoned to me, and I went.
“We can’t kill one of them, let alone a thousand.” Brynner paced nervously.
Amy nodded. “At last, you understand. Grace Roberts, would you mind translating this?”
I finally saw what she pointed at. On one side of the lab, the creature had worked a circle of glyphs that looked like all the others. I mouthed the words, working through the symbols. “The paths of the dead, the way, the hidden, Ra- Ame—”
Brynner shouted, “Stop!” He paced toward me. “Never out loud. Never speak them out loud.”
Amy stepped between us. “Brynner Carson, the scribes of Grave Services have read them every way imaginable. It is said if one cannot see the fifth sign, these inscriptions are harmless.” Amy pointed to the quadrants. “Four quadrants. Five signs.”
I knelt and traced them. “There aren’t five concepts here. Four, just like in all the others.”
Amy shrugged. “I can only tell you what is said. And what of this?” She pointed to the other area, where a normal block of hieroglyphics written in blood lay.
I read the symbols. And again, and a third time to be sure. “It’s from Ra-Ame. Her demands.”
Brynner stood beside me. “She already killed the Re-Animus and destroyed the Sin Eater’s body. What more does she want? Her heart?”
I nodded. “And yours.”
He shrugged.
“And mine.”
Brynner stiffened, his eyes narrowing. “Why? I understand hers. And mine.” He looked to Amy. “Grave Services has put up with these things longer than we have. What do you think?”
Amy pursed her lips. “I do not know what you expect of me, Brynner Carson. Do you expect me to tell you the mind of Ra-Ame? You will be disappointed.” Then she caught my eye. “Grace knows things that she will not be permitted to know and live. Though the old ones are destroyed, their secrets live here.” Amy pointed to my head.
“I’m not giving up.” I stood up a chair and pushed a desk over. “I won’t go easily.” I looked to Brynner. “Interview everyone; reconstruct its actions. I want to know its exact path through the building.”
He nodded, his face somber. “And that helps how?”
“She knew where the Re-Animus was. Look at the other doors on the way here. Are any of them broken? She knew how to disable the waterfall. At the casino, she said she’d watched me sleep. We have a traitor in the BSI.”
Brynner nodded. “I’ll get on it. Amy, would you mind helping me keep things straight?”
“Gladly. It will not matter if Ra-Ame’s army arrives.” She followed him out.
And though I struggled to force my mind to the task at hand, pressing amber bolts, my thoughts drifted to the artifact at my feet. Again and again, I divided the circle into its component symbols, then their ideas.
Whoever created it definitely had a theme in mind. Opening the way, the hidden paths, reveal, and of course, Ra-Ame. But there wasn’t a fifth symbol. I had to be losing my mind to even think it was possible.
But Brynner and Amy seemed so certain. If he lied to me in the car, it was because he believed it himself. Did madmen know they were mad? Would the deluded recognize their delusion? I emptied my mind and filled my hands running the press, coating each bolt with a hot, burnt glaze.
These were no weapons to kill a monster.
Those sacrificial blades, on the other hand, were a weapon worthy of a warrior. As the hours went on, and I filled syringes, my eyes grew bleary. Yet the drawing called to me.
There had to be an answer. Something had happened to Brynner’s mother. Even Director Bismuth believed these drawings held significance. But what the connection was escaped me.
I never liked doing translation.
It wasn’t for lack of skill. It was that in almost all cases, it was impossible to be certain. At some level, it always came down to interpretation. To assignment and testing of the meaning. What I wanted more than anything was to be certain.
And just for a moment, when I looked at the artifact, I caught a glimpse. A ghostly after-image, not formed by the lines of the other glyphs, but by the negative spaces between them.
Not a proper symbol. More of a suggestion.
The minutes turned to hours as I grasped at images just beyond sight. I thought of dead eyes, staring. Never blinking. Like them, I stared with weary eyes until the images floated before me. And when I closed my eyes, it hung in the air, imprinted before me. This glyph had no equivalent in true hieroglyphs, and yet the meaning burned its way into my mind. The words came unbidden, in the ancient language, a language not fit for human tongues.
Open the way, the paths of the dead, to Ra-Ame, the last sign exist? Arrive? Be. The fifth sign wasn’t a word, it was a concept, one of existence.
When I opened my eyes, the west half of my lab was gone. My hands and feet felt leaden, like I’d fallen asleep at the lab bench.
I picked up a wrench and tossed it a few feet past where the salt floor became bare rock. It bounced into darkness.
I knew right then I’d lost my mind. Fallen asleep at the machine. Or maybe snuggled up to Brynner in his car, having a nightmare. But my mind wouldn’t stop. The two stone slabs. One with five silver jars, each overturned. The other slab stood empty. I took a step inside and touched the ground. The dirt beneath my fingers felt real. Smelled real.
A scorpion skittered by, out of the tomb and into my lab.
It was very real.
I glanced up, looking at the stone figures at the corners. Tall wooden spears in their hands, with iron points.
Brynner had said they didn’t move until his mother touched the jar.
I thought of the knives. Four more of them lay on the second slab. Four knives to replace two lost. I ran for the slab, picking each up by their tapered handle. I kept my eyes on the guardians, who stood still as stone.
When I glanced over my shoulder, the lab wavered, like an image of the sky in a pond.
While my head was turned, a noise, like the whisper of rat’s feet came to me. I leaped, onto the second slab, into the air. I landed on my lab desk, knocking the air out of me and sending blades clattering.
Rolling over, I looked back to the tomb. And saw nothing. The lab stretched out like it had before.
The symbols on the ground had changed from red to burnt black, crumbling.
I gathered the blades from across my lab. Four perfect, amber-coated blades, with a streak of white where alabaster inset the blade.
They were real.
Which meant I was crazy.
I slipped them into an equipment box, slung the box over my shoulder, and carefully climbed up the elevator shaft to the lobby. After a few minutes of wandering, I found Brynner. “I need to talk.”
“Grace.” Brynner’s furrowed brow and crossed arms made me hesitate. “You were right. One of our clerks pressed a second card key for your room. Got paid
a few hundred thousand for it.” He stopped, scanning my face. “What’s wrong?”
I began to shake as I fought to reconcile what I knew to be true and what I could deal with. “I think I need help.”
“Medic!” He stood and shouted, waving over a field medic from the line. I clung to Brynner when the medic asked him to leave.
The medic took out a penlight and looked into my eyes. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
I held up the box. “I’m having a mental breakdown.”
The medic pushed it aside. “Lady, given what you’ve done in the last month, you can have five and no one will blink.” He nodded to the box. “You didn’t”—he looked to Brynner—“cut anything, did you?”
Brynner took the box from me, prying my fingers from it, and clicked it open. His eyes grew round, and he shook his head. “Where?”
I closed my eyes and gritted my teeth, willing this to make sense. “I saw the fifth sign. I read the fifth sign. I saw her tomb. I. Saw. It.” And when I opened my eyes, he still held a silver blade with yellow edges. I lunged at Brynner, grabbing him by the collar and giving voice to the terror inside.
“She isn’t there. She is coming.”
Thirty-Seven
BRYNNER
I’d seen men do worse over less. I turned the blades over in my hands again and again. Perfect matches of the ones I’d broken. Ancient weapons designed to keep a Re-Animus dead. Once I was sure the medic had Grace sedated, I made a beeline to Amy, who lounged in the sun outside.
“I need you to stay with Grace. She’s sedated, and she’s not well.” I handed her a medical bracelet that matched the one I’d put on Grace.
Amy swung out of the lawn chair on the sidewalk, her face unreadable. “What has happened?”
“Grace came after me, started screaming that Ra-Ame was coming.”
“It is good that Grace Roberts recognizes this.” Amy folded her hands together, nodding.
“You know better than that. She doesn’t believe anything unless she can prove it. But she doesn’t just believe it. She knows it. And it’s driving her crazy.”
“How? I could spend a thousand summers and not convince her of what is.”
The thought made me sick, but the proof lay strapped to my sides. I drew a blade slowly out. “She said she saw the fifth sign. She gave me this.”
Amy cursed in Arabic, staring at it. “It is the sister of those your mother stole. There can be no doubt. Grace Roberts has walked the paths of the dead to Ra-Ame’s tomb.”
“That’s what I am afraid of. Grace said the slab was empty. And that Ra-Ame is coming. Can you stay with Grace? I don’t want her to wake up and wander. Her view of the world just took a mighty hit.”
Amy patted me on the back. “You will go to her lab and make certain nothing else returned?”
“Yes.”
“Then I will wait with Grace Roberts. She will have questions when she wakes, so many questions. I will not let her invoke the paths of the dead again. The Guardians of Ra-Ame’s tomb should have slain her. It is dark miracle she did not die there, as your mother did.”
And every fiber in my body screamed. “How did you know that?”
Either she didn’t realize how close I was to cutting her down as the Re-Animus spy, or she didn’t care. “Brynner Carson, your father lied on passports and searched the empty lands for a tomb. He carried with him relics no man would be allowed to remove. How could I not know?”
“I’m sorry. It’s getting to me. Aren’t you the least bit afraid I might have stabbed you?”
Amy shook her head. “You move slowly. You show no skill. One day, if you focus, train and meditate all your life, you will never be my equal.”
The Grave Services folks had serious issues with standards. “Thanks. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Take care, Brynner Carson. If legends are true, her guardians are deadly beyond measure.” She moved, as graceful as a house cat, the crowd parting before her like magic.
I spent the next few hours in Vault Zero, cataloguing everything. Nothing escaped my study. The burnt writing on the floor. The scorpion, so far from home in rainy, wet Seattle. The amber-pressed bolts, which bore only passing resemblance to my ceremonial blades.
I felt guilty just carrying them, even though they fit my hands perfectly. I told myself they were mine.
Given to me by Grace, at a cost so high I shuddered to consider it. I’d seen the guardians move. I knew how quickly they struck. Why had Grace gone in there? She should have run. Should have gotten me, or Amy, or anyone else.
Instead—instead she was herself. Of course she’d gone into the tomb. If Grace was right—and when was she not?—Ra-Ame’s body no longer lay on the slab. Which meant, in my book, she was up, moving around, and probably very cranky after a fourthousand-yearnap.
I checked the Re-Animus containment pod again. Six-inch steel smashed like it was butter. How could I hope to stand against one of those things, let alone a thousand? After rechecking everything, I climbed back out and went to the director’s office to report, using the one working elevator.
Director Bismuth sat in her chair, the only furniture in her office that hadn’t been smashed or thrown out the window. She looked up from the sheaf of reports in her hand. “Mr. Carson, have you found the creature?”
Her very tone demanded a response bred into me from my earliest days. “We did not.”
“And the state of the lab?”
“Destroyed. The Re-Animus corpse is torched; the one we captured was killed. Vault Zero is no longer secure, and I’m not sure it can be repaired. We’re forming secure lines and have glazers repairing windows. The building superstructure is repairable.”
She nodded. “And I understand we’ve received a new demand?”
“Yes, ma’am. The Heart of Ra-Ame and two others, in return for peace.”
Director Bismuth threw the papers on the floor. “I don’t want peace in which the Re-Animus survive. But tell me how I can fight these things. I’m starting to wonder how many of her demands I can meet.”
Amy was right. The Re-Animus weren’t the only monsters. “Grace Roberts may be your only hope if Ra-Ame doesn’t keep her word. Did you think about that? What if you gave Ra-Ame everything, and everything wasn’t enough?”
Her eyes narrowed as she contemplated my words. “You’ve put me in a difficult situation. Your mother and I went to college together. Your father and I were good friends. And yet, times change. What would your father do if his death could save a million lives? What would he do for just one?”
“Keep Grace out of this. I made a call to Grave Services; they’re rechecking every place my dad had a dig permit and a bunch more he didn’t but might have snuck off to. If we find the heart, I’ll take it to Ra-Ame myself.” I left her in her office. She didn’t look up as I left.
I went back to the medical room, where Amy sat crosslegged, whittling a pine stake with one of her curved blades.
“Is Grace awake?”
“No. You people sleep more than the dead.”
If I had an ounce of Amy’s energy, I could kill every meatskin in America and run a marathon. “And you don’t sleep at all.”
“I will sleep when I am dead. If you are tired, rest. I want to feel the night air again.” Amy rose and walked out of the room.
I took a spare blanket from the emergency supply box and slipped onto Grace’s cot, wrapping my arms around her. She sighed, pushing herself against me, and slipped back into sleep. It seemed I blinked, and in that moment, Grace was awake, looking around, and up at me.
“I had a bad dream.”
I squeezed her. “You unlocked the paths of the dead. Traveled to Ra-Ame’s tomb. Do you believe in magic now?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what it is, but I can find out. Maybe some sort of space fold? When we can control it, we can use it to go anywhere.”
Grace would be okay. Magic could fit into her world, so long as it was described
with quantums and electrons and gravity and folds.
“Why did you risk going into that tomb?”
She shivered despite the warmth of our skin and the heavy blanket covering us. “The blades. I needed to replace your blades. The guardians—”
I jerked myself up. “You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t. And I got out with them. You have four now. Four times the danger. Four times the death.”
I wanted to scream but forced a whisper. “I don’t want new weapons, Grace. I want you. My dad lost his wife. I lost my mother.”
Grace shuddered, tears coming to her eyes, but I didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until she understood. “Dad lost the person he loved the most, and all he had in return were two knives and a silver can. I spent ten years hating him for dragging it with him everywhere. Like it was the most precious thing on earth.”
I pressed my forehead to the back of her head. “But God help me, I understand him now. It was all he had left of her. And if you died, these blades would be all I would have to remember you. The only thing left that you touched. You can’t hold a blade at night to stay warm, or kiss a blade and have it kiss back. Dad held on to the heart not because of Ra-Ame. Because of Mom. All he had was an empty coffin and a jar—”
I jerked upright, throwing off the covers. “Can you move?”
“You normally sleep with a girl and then run out?” Grace ignored my fuming and stretched. “I’m woozy, but I’ll be fine. Where’s the fire?”
“Get a bag of weapons. Find Amy. I’m going to go get my mom’s ashes.” I rose from the cot, then knelt to kiss her. “I know where the heart is.”
GRACE
I can’t say which made me happier. Brynner’s declaration that he knew where that cursed heart was or that he valued me more than an irreplaceable weapon. My limbs didn’t move well, but eventually I managed to stumble out of the door and out of the building.
Far beyond the safe line of the BSI headquarters, Amy stood in a throng of people going to and from work. When I caught up with her, she smiled at me. “I like it here. Reminds me of home, where the streets were always crowded.”