by J. C. Nelson
“I hear you had to take turns babysitting me.”
She shrugged. “Many men cannot handle when the world changes. But I knew you would be well, Grace Roberts. Is it true? Did you discover the fifth sign?”
My voice caught in my throat. “It is. And I can show you how to see it, too. It’s hidden in plain sight. The lab might be gone. The bodies might be gone, but we have archives of everything.”
Amy regarded me with a dark stare. “This is what got your heart added to Ra-Ame’s demands.”
“She can have it when she takes it from me. Until then, I’m going to fight. Brynner thinks he knows where the heart is.”
Amy nodded. “Yes, finally, the location is revealed. It is in Director Bismuth’s possession. She will turn it over to Ra-Ame tomorrow.”
I glanced back to BSI headquarters. “What? The director has it?”
“So she claims. Director Bismuth has asked me to guard the heart until tomorrow. Ra-Ame will claim it then.” Amy furrowed her eyebrows. “You can believe in magic but not that Ra-Ame would do so?”
“It’s not magic. Just because I don’t know what it is yet or how to control it doesn’t make it magic. I’ll set up studies with the other artifacts. Now that I know how to trigger them, we’ll learn to build them. Control them.” I turned back to Amy. “I don’t think the director has the heart.”
“Ra-Ame will not forgive a lie from anyone, not even the director of the BSI.” Amy took my elbow, walking me back to the building. “It is not safe for you out here, Grace Roberts. Many of the old ones know your name.”
They’d know more than that, if I had my way. They’d know the joys of eternal death. “And it’s safe for you?”
We stepped past the BSI firing line and Amy pulled her hair back, adjusting her ponytail. “Did you know Grave Services gives each member a funeral when they are sworn in? It is so they understand they are already dead. There is nothing to fear.”
“So you won’t come with us?”
“No. Brynner Carson did not know where the heart was before. I have seen the truth in his eyes. He does not know now, I think. And this director, she may lie or tell the truth. Only time will tell.” We walked through the lobby, where crews worked to replace the elevator.
“Then I need to ask a favor.” I didn’t really want to ask. It wasn’t mythology. It was research, I told myself. “Would you mind taking an hour or so and telling me everything you know about Ra-Ame?”
Amy laughed, a grin on her face. “I have made a believer out of you? Amazing, Grace Roberts. It is a true miracle.” When the door opened to our apartment floor, she waved me down the hall.
“I didn’t say I believed in magic. I’m just open to understanding the possibilities. Legends. Stories. I want to hear them. There might be answers in them, hints of the truth.”
“Then sit, Grace Roberts. And listen. Children’s stories. Madmen’s tales. I will tell you what they say, and you must decide what you believe.”
Our apartment floor had escaped the creature’s rampage, though it stank of plastic smoke, so I opened the window, letting in the summer sun, and sat in a rocking chair across from the couch. “Make a believer out of me, Amy.”
“As if such a thing could be done.” She handed me a cup of coffee and sat on the couch. “So listen to the stories of Ra-Ame. I can tell you only what is known by men, and only guessed at, but Ra-Ame was born in the Middle Kingdom. You would say four thousand years ago. We would say four ages. She was not the most beautiful of Hotep’s daughters, nor his favorite, and for her father’s attention she worked without fail.
“Legends say she taught the crocodiles to weave baskets for her and gave a mountain of baskets to her father, but he said, ‘What do I need with baskets? I have no fish to put in them.’”
“Then she charmed the river fish, so they jumped from the Nile into the baskets, and brought her father to see. And her father scoffed, and said, ‘What are fish and baskets, if I have no salt to cure them?’”
“Finally, Ra-Ame whispered to the scorpions, and they brought a mountain of salt. ‘I have done well, Father. Here are a thousand baskets and ten thousand salted fish.’”
“When he looked upon all she had done, he finally loved her for a time. Then a plague came. The people said a sorcerer brought it. And some said it was a curse from the sun, or the earth itself. It blew in clouds like the desert sand, dark like the storms of spring.”
“And where it passed, the dead rose and attacked.”
“Hotep went to his wise men, and asked them to divine how to drive away the plague.”
“They answered, saying only a royal sacrifice would appease it.”
“And the pharaoh took Ra-Ame, and chained her in the Valley of Dust, where the kings go to die.”
“When darkness came, he kissed her cheeks and slit her wrists. And the plague came upon her, finding her. Dwelling in her. Seeking her very soul.”
“At sunrise, when the priests came to deliver her body, she greeted them. Her heart did not beat. Her lungs knew no breath save to speak, and her blood mixed with the sand. And they worshipped her, the willing sacrifice.”
“As children became old men, and old men became dust, the people began to fear Ra-Ame. A new pharaoh rose, one who envied her. So he ordered a tomb constructed and six knives made. And in her tomb, he drove the knives through her body and ordered her soul destroyed.”
“Ra-Ame swore with her final words that if she ever rose, the world would burn.”
“When the priests took out her organs, they found only black sand. And from that, they knew she was cursed. The heart was only a lump of black diamond that shifted and moved. So they tore the heart from her chest, sealing her cursed soul in the jar.”
“Ra-Ame slept but did not die.”
“Sheepherders said that at night, her spirit roamed the dark, whispering, and retreated to her tomb at dawn. And she captured those who died under the darkness, stealing their bodies to guard her own. Ra-Ame was dead, and yet she lived on.”
“One night she took a man who fell in the desert, holding his heart. But he did not come to her. He left and sailed away, taking a piece of her with him.”
“The legends repeat many times. A scorned woman who stabbed herself, but awoke. The cattle man bitten by an asp. Some she took as her guards, and those that still had will left to become her children. The plague’s children became the old ones.” “And Ra-Ame slept and dreamed of revenge on the kingdom. Over time, she gathered an army, kept underground, underwater. The spears of men did not break their hide, nor the salty seas leave them empty. But when Ra-Ame looked out on the world, it had changed. The old men were gone. New men, in new places roamed.”
Amy stopped and leaned forward. “Then a woman walked the secret paths her children used and stole her heart. And without the ceremonial knives, her spirit returned to her body. That is what I believe.”
I sat for several minutes, digesting the details of Amy’s story before I finally spoke. “If I believed in souls, I’d buy that. Let me tell you my version: Someone did something horrible to a woman. She became a host for a parasite that grew stronger with time, and occasionally this parasite reproduced, spreading itself across the world.” I sipped my now-cold coffee. “It’s every bit as plausible as yours.”
Amy regarded me like a toddler. “And these paths of the dead? Do you have an explanation for them?”
“Not yet. Give me time. And thank you. I don’t know what the answers are yet, but at least I have better questions. And I’ll figure out an explanation for their obsession with water.” Even now, it bothered me that I hadn’t been able to derive a pattern.
“Water? What of it?” Amy cocked an eyebrow at me, her head turned to the side.
“We have evidence the Re-Animus in Vegas was writing artifacts over water. On a boat, on a barge. On a restaurant over a pier.”
I waited as Amy crossed her arms, her eyes closed in thought. “I will tell you nothing for certain, but perhaps
a legend explains this.”
“Go on.”
“Ra-Ame grew tired of her children waking her constantly, always demanding her favor. So the legend says she laid down a rule of blood. If her children could not open the paths above water, they would be destroyed the moment they set foot in her tomb. Only the most powerful of the old ones would dare try. But I suppose you have another theory for that as well.”
“I’ll figure one out. Take care of yourself, Amy.” I gave her a hug and ran for the elevator. At the armory, I grabbed a fresh set of Deliverators and a bag with Brynner’s name on it, promising I’d deliver it myself. When I got to the lobby, Brynner stood, conversing with an Indian man wearing a white doctor’s coat. As I walked up, he nodded to me.
Brynner kept one hand on the doctor’s shoulder. “You wanted to know how I felt. I felt hurt. Wounded. Alone.” He looked past the doctor to me. “I’m still hurt. I’m not healed, and I’m so sad at times it almost kills me. But I’m not alone.” He turned around, cutting off the conversation, and took my hand. “You took your sweet time. Where’s Amy?”
“It’s just us. Now let’s go get that heart.”
Thirty-Eight
BRYNNER
I expected trouble on the way to the airport. I expected trouble when we boarded the plane. It wasn’t really until we were in the air at cruising altitude that I felt like maybe we’d avoided disaster. Grace and I leaned back in our first-class seats and sipped our first-class wine, and I tried to calm the feeling of impending disaster in my chest.
Beside me, Grace tapped on her tablet, reading papers on immunology, physiology, and other -ologies. It wasn’t that I couldn’t learn to understand them. It was just that I knew my role in life. Grace would never be able to cut the artery of a monster in one swipe while blinding another and killing a third. I didn’t mind.
Under the seat in front of me rested the urn with my mother’s ashes.
When we touched down, I stood armed and waiting for an attack that never came while Grace got the rental car.
She pulled up, and I tossed our equipment in the rear. “Head to the Bentonville cemetery,” I said, sliding into the passengersideseat.
Grace drove like a snail. We were being passed by stationary objects. Then she looked over with that “Brynner, it’s time we talked” look.
“Don’t tell me our relationship won’t work. We barely have one.” I took her hand. “Please.”
She rolled her eyes. “I was going to tell you why Amy didn’t come. Director Bismuth asked her to stay in Seattle and guard Ra-Ame’s heart.”
I’d have said I was shocked, but nothing that woman did surprised me anymore. “Bismuth is lying.” Then again, maybe she’d known the location all along or had it in her possession. “She told me she’d use it as bait if the BSI had it.”
Grace stared out the window, lost in thought. “If they knew where it was, why send me to translate Heinrich’s journals?”
“They didn’t. I’m certain I know where it is. Absolutely certain.” And I was. The only question in my mind was why I didn’t realize it sooner.
We pulled up at the Bentonville Funeral Home, and I got out, with Grace at my side.
She grabbed my arm. “You want to tell me what you’re doing?”
“I’m keeping us from getting shot.” I knocked on the door and waited.
When Mr. Parker answered, he looked at me with awe. “I saw you on the news.”
“We recovered my mom’s body. I thought this time I’d ask for help.” I held out the box with her ashes.
Mr. Parker went inside and came out with his hat on. “Go on up and wait. I’ll bring the backhoe. Which one are we digging up?”
“Both.”
We drove to the cemetery entrance and walked the rolling hills. I looked over to Grace, who waited patiently. “The last time I saw Dad, I was still angry with him. He wanted me to come to Mom’s grave and talk. He said he needed to tell me things.”
“And I told him that Mom wasn’t there. That he wasn’t there. Mom was dead and he might as well be. He just carried that goddamned jar with him everywhere.”
We crossed the stream that ran from the top of Dad’s tomb. “I snuck out and stole Mr. Parker’s backhoe. Dug up the coffin and threw it open. I just wanted to make him admit she wasn’t there. That standing and talking to a headstone didn’t help.”
Grace put her hand on my back. “And the heart was in her coffin?”
“No. It was empty. I called Dad and he drove to the cemetery. I made him look. The next morning I went out to the highway and caught a ride. Hitchhiked to New York and caught a boat to Europe, where the BSI let me float as a remote operative.”
She knelt at Dad’s grave, tracing the stone. “And you never came home to avoid charges.”
“There were no charges. Dad buried the coffin with Mr. Parker’s help. Sheriff Bishop made sure the report just listed “vandals.” They never told anyone else what happened. And I didn’t come home when Dad got sick. Or when he died.”
I stood before Dad’s headstone. “I finally understand. It was all he had left of her. That’s why he held on to it. It’s why it was the only thing he wrote about.”
Grace shook her head. “I’ve read all the journals. He only mentioned the heart twice.”
I’d snuck his journal more times than I could count on the rare holidays when he came to visit. And I knew enough hieroglyphics to recognize my own name, Son of Me. “So what did he write about?”
“You. He kept track of your assignments. Your injuries. Your commendations. I think he worried about you constantly.”
The diesel engine of a backhoe signaled Mr. Parker’s arrival, rolling up the road and over to Dad’s grave. He killed the engine and shouted, “You sure this is safe?”
I nodded. “Mostly. You pull the coffin out, I’ll take it from there.”
Grace stood with me, keeping watch over open plains as Mr. Parker worked. In time, he stopped using the large bucket and switched to a hooked harness. The harness clinked as he locked it onto the coffin. With gentle care, he raised the hoe arm, lifting out Dad’s coffin, setting it in the grass. Mr. Parker leaped from the backhoe and scrambled down the hill as fast as he could hobble.
Grace watched him leave. “Where is he going?”
“Same place you are. Get moving. Dad’s ashes are in the coffin.”
She paused. “I read his report. He wasn’t processed or cremated.”
“Not in the traditional way, no. Dad figured the meat-skins would want to come after him.” I laughed, remembering his wild eyes as he made plans. “Those locks will only open under full sunlight. His ashes are in the coffin, along with six hundred pounds of plastic explosives, rigged to go off when the lid opens. Dad figured if a Re-Animus dug him up to get at the body, he’d pay for it.”
Grace ran down the hill.
I knelt by Dad’s coffin, finding the trigger locks that would disarm the counter, and pressing each three times.
Holding my breath, I threw the lid open.
Inside, packed in a mound of gray and wires nestled a box like the one I’d brought from Seattle. Grace came back up the hill, and I took the other box from her.
She waited as I walked, mixing handfuls of each together, and spreading them across half a mile of the desert my mom had loved so much.
Now they were part of it for eternity.
By the time I came back, Mr. Parker had uncovered Mom’s coffin as well. With the desert sun streaming down, I forced the lid open. Nestled in the white lining lay a silver urn, wide as a bowling pin, with the mask of Horus on top.
“Here.” I picked it up and handed it to Grace. “The heart of Ra-Ame.”
GRACE
Her heart. Not some legend. Not a myth. The actual heart of Ra-Ame lay in my hands. And beneath my fingertips, it shifted, as though a rat scurried inside. “Brynner! Is it supposed to move?”
He nodded. “It does that. Try sleeping with it under your pillow sometime.”
“I don’t like your version of the tooth fairy.”
“Really?” Brynner smiled at me. “The tooth fairy always left me high-caliber ammo. I loved losing teeth.” He shut Heinrich’s coffin and turned to Mr. Parker. “I removed the detonators. There’s no reason to keep them anymore. You can turn off the stream, too.”
“I’ll see that things are set right here. I was right worried about you when I heard about Seattle.” Mr. Parker got up in the seat of the backhoe and started the engine.
Brynner stopped. “What about Seattle?”
He killed the engine, frowning. “The BSI building in Seattle collapsed. An hour and a half before you got here. I thought you knew.”
It must have been right after we touched down.
I hit the network connect on my tablet and logged in to the secure net. “The buildings. The labs.”
Brynner looked over my shoulder at the news feed of smoking rubble. “Amy. I hope she got out.” He whipped out his cell phone, dialing. It rang over and over, clicked and rang again. “This is Brynner Carson. Put me through to whoever’s in charge.”
The phone buzzed, a woman’s voice speaking.
He shook his head. “Security code is Radio Glow Orange. I’m not dead.”
Why did they think he was?
He pressed the speakerphone, holding a finger to his lips while looking at me.
The phone beeped, then a robotic voice spoke. “Attending: Brynner Carson, BSI field operative.”
An equally robotic voice answered. “Carson, you son of a bitch, you alive?”
“Pays to work remote, Dale. What happened?”
A keyboard clicked in the background. “BSI headquarters went down in dust. The director made it out with a handful of the staff.”
Brynner looked down at the ground. “We had a Grave Services operative in the building. Amy Rust. Egyption, tall, brown, beautiful.”
“Did you sleep with her?”
Brynner almost threw the phone into the dirt. “Goddamn it, did she make it out?”
After a moment, Dale answered. “That means no. I’m checking survivor registries.” A computer chirped and whirred. “We only have BSI personnel on the registry. I’ll check with Grave Services and see if she’s reported in. HQ is gone, Carson, and it was Ra-Ame. The queen of them all.”