by John Meaney
“Power generation,” said Donal. “The Illurian way.”
Beside him, the woman with the clipboard opened her mouth, but gave only a croak. Blood drained from her face. Donal took hold of her arm to steady her.
“I didn't—” She started to whisper, then stopped.
“Some people here did know,” Donal murmured.
But it wasn't just the junior workers who looked astonished or sickened. Some of the older men—and one woman—with gray hair and costlier suits, stepped back from their colleagues, distancing themselves from the collaboration whose true nature they could no longer deny.
Dr. Grayfell, scowling, was looking straight at Donal.
Time I was gone.
Beside him, the young woman wiped her face. Then, covering her mouth with her hand, she pitched her voice low.
“Out through those doors, and turn right. There's a life-ward blocking the way.”
Donal turned to look out at the caverns, the rows of reactor piles, so that no one could see his face as he said: “Thanks. I'm sorry.”
Then he strode through the group of businessmen and -women. One of the Illurians tried to grab Donal's arm, but Donal merely swung his forearm in an arc, breaking the grip as he walked. He went through a set of doors.
“I want to talk to that man,” came Dr. Grayfell's voice.
The doors shut behind Donal.
Now. Fast.
Donal broke into a sprint, ran to the end of the corridor where it split into three—no one here, good—then threw himself to the right just as he heard the sound of doors opening. He accelerated, trusting the advice the young woman had given him—faster—and then the air was viscous and fluorescing coldly around him. He pushed on, and then he was through, taking the first turn he came to, before slowing down.
No living person could have come this way, through the ward shield. With luck, no one besides the young woman had recognized Donal for what he was.
He continued at a walk, slowing his pace but not his heartbeat, for his black zombie heart had pumped at the same rate while sprinting, while climbing, and while standing at rest. An undead body regulated energy production in other ways.
Laura, I love you. I miss you.
The universe gave no reply.
Donal made it back to the Mortisection Chamber without tripping alarms or confronting any Energy Authority workers. When he entered, Finross's corpse still lay upon the ceramic bier, but the lacework of nerves and arteries was gone. What was left looked shrunken and wrinkled. Emptied.
“—any trace at all of thaumatonic legendization,” Lexar was saying. “This means …”
On a frame beside him, a vellum page, mostly filled with purple script, thumped up and down several times, like a drumskin struck by invisible sticks. It was an error message.
“Command: stet,” said Lexar. “Explanation: legendization is a technical word in my domain. Command: add to vocabulary.”
Donal looked up at the ceiling. It was flat and pale gray, hiding the inverted tree and silver flock that hung above it. Here in the chamber, it was only him and Lexar and the body. No sign of the engineers.
“Command: continue,” added Lexar. “The uncovered memories are true representations of the deceased's filtered experiences. So testified by me, Lexar Pinderwin, Bone Listener Level Five, for the Office of the Chief Medical Listener, on this day, Quinday, the 35th of Hextember, 6607. Command: endit.”
A drop of blood leaked from Lexar's nostril. He wiped it away.
“You've finished?” asked Donal.
“Yes. The report's done.” Lexar nodded toward the vellum page, where his final words had been added to the purple script. “But you won't find what you're looking for. I didn't find it, Listening to his bones.”
“Huh. What am I looking for?”
“A chain of links to follow. You call the conspirators the Black Circle. I didn't get their true name from Finross. He didn't know it.”
“So he was, what, a junior member?”
“Practically a dumb tool,” said Lexar. “He had a … difficult childhood. It made him the kind of person Cortindo could manipulate.”
“That bastard. I've already killed him once.”
“I hope you get a chance to do it again, Lieut—Donal. Perma nently.”
“Is a revenant mage more or less powerful than when he was living? Do you know?”
“You'd need to ask a mage, but my guess is”—Lexar's eyes blinked in their usual froglike fashion—“he's stronger now, on balance.”
“Balls. That was my guess too.”
Donal knew nothing about mage lore, or the differences between revenants and zombies, but he knew the changes he'd experienced in himself.
“Finross's body is ready for the reactors.” Lexar was putting his instruments into a case, ignoring the corpse. “You want to see the process?”
“I can live without it.” Donal smiled. “Or whatever you call what I'm doing now.”
“I'm sorry?” Lexar looked up, his trident device in hand. “Oh, right. I see what you mean. Neither one of us is standard human issue.”
“Probably not.”
“So … Did you need a lift back to Avenue of the Basilisks, Donal?”
“Thanks, but I've got chauffeurs waiting for me.”
“Chauffeurs?”
“A couple of charmers known as the Barbarians.” Donal walked toward the exit, then paused. “Actually, they're good guys. The best.”
“You lead an interesting life. Or whatever you call what you're doing.”
“Yeah.” Donal pressed the door release. “Take it easy, Lexar.”
“You too.”
It was late when the Brodowskis dropped him off at the front steps of Police HQ. They drove on, while FenSeven and several other death-wolves watched.
“How are you doing, FenSeven?”
“All. Right. Do-nal.”
Donal passed up the steps, identified himself by stating his badge number, and waited for the massive doors to open. Entering, he waved to Eduardo, the sergeant whose upper body was permanently melded with the massive granite block that doubled as the duty desk.
“Hey, Lieutenant.”
“Everything going okay?”
“Ain't going nowhere. Same old.”
“Yeah.”
Donal passed along the length of the great foyer, and reached the elevator shafts. There, he stepped inside number 7, and wraith limbs took hold of him.
*How're you doing, lover?*
“Fine, Gertie. Take me to minus twenty-seven, will—? Hang on, do you happen to know if the commissioner is in?”
*Yes.*
Perhaps Vilnar would want to see Donal in person, finally.
“Take me to him, please.”
*I can't. Sorry, honey.*
“But you said—”
*You asked if I knew something, and I said yes. Because I do.*
“Say what?”
*I know Arrhennius Vilnar is not in the building. See?*
“Gertie …”
*So which way do you want to go? I like all ways, myself.*
“Thanatos. Just let me back out, all right?”
For a moment, he swung suspended above the vertical drop that went down for hundreds, maybe thousands of feet. Then he felt the pressure of part-materialized wraith-hands upon his back.
*Later, lover.*
And she pushed him out into the foyer, very fast.
“Have a lovely evening, Gertie.”
Donal took a purple cab to Darksan Tower. Inside, three doormen in black coats bowed to him, and he touched his forehead in salute. He crossed the gold-chased floor and stopped before a bank of elevators. The center doors opened. Donal stepped inside a curved, brass-and-gold elevator-car.
“Parking garage, please.” He pressed the button marked PG. “How are you doing today?”
The panel rippled under his touch.
“Good.” Donal stood in place during the descent. “Thanks. See you in a bit.
”
He stepped through to the half-lit garage, while brass doors slid shut behind him. Stretching to either side were rows of gleaming saloons and limousines. A uniformed driver was polishing the headlights of a Galaxia. He raised his hand, still holding the mantasuede cloth.
“How's life, Donal?”
“I swear I can't remember. How about you?”
“Can't complain. Well, I could, but no one ever pays—”
“Sorry, did you say something?”
They both laughed.
“See you later, Rowan.”
“Later, pal.”
Donal walked past several large supporting pillars, and reached the farthest row. Finally he came to a streamlined Vixen, parked with an empty space to either side. Her fins were long, her green headlights slanted like eyes. Donal stopped in front of her.
“I know,” he said, “that things are strange between us.”
There was no reply of any kind. He reached out toward the hood, stopped, then withdrew his hand.
“Traveling by taxi is fine. Day-to-day driving is not what I need you to—Shit.” Donal rubbed his face. “Look, I know you're grieving too. I promise I'll look after you.”
The car remained silent.
“So I'm going to carry on. The ones really responsible for Laura's … For Laura. I'm going to get them.”
Donal waited for perhaps a minute without breathing. He could remain as still as the Vixen, if he needed to.
Finally, he continued: “There was Gelbthorne, in Silvex City, who got away. So did Malfax Cortindo. As for Blanz, I took the bastard's eyes out…. Last I heard, he was in a secure hospital in Fortinium, healing up to go to trial.”
I hope he dies.
But no one had given Donal an update on Blanz's condition.
“Anyway, that's it. I'm going to track them down. I promise you.”
Nothing from the car.
“Just… Take care of yourself.”
Donal turned and headed back toward the elevator.
The elevator paused at ground level for a group of well-dressed residents to enter. From the tuxedos and gowns, they might have been at the opera. One of the men hitched a thumb inside his waistcoat, glanced at Donal, then turned to his companions.
“The City Council is about to see changes, my friends. Welcome changes.”
“Making the streets safer for ordinary folk, I hope.”
“Absolutely,” said another. “In fact, the sooner they confiscate—”
One of the women touched the man's sleeve, then adjusted her white fur stole as she spoke. “Confidential matters, my dear, should remain confidential.”
The man she'd interrupted shook his head, then caught sight of Donal, and grew still. Perhaps he hadn't realized that his friends had begun the conversation to embarrass the resurrected man with them, not furnish a helpful warning. No one said anything more until the elevator stopped at the 129th floor, and the group stepped out into the richly carpeted hallway.
“Have a lovely evening,” Donal called out from the elevator, as the doors slid shut. “You perfect assholes.”
The elevator's walls rippled with what might have been amusement.
“You have a great evening too,” said Donal to the elevator, as it stopped on 227. “But in your case, I mean it. Thanks.”
As he exited to a polished obsidian chamber, he caught the faintest, distant whisper behind him.
*You're very welcome.*
The elevator doors closed, and then he was alone. The chamber was twenty feet high, ending in black steel double doors that swung open, sensing Donal. Beyond was a larger antechamber, furnished in steel and matte black, in which blue flames danced atop helical stands. A forbidding twelve-foot mask glowered from the wall.
“Home sweet home,” muttered Donal.
The mask's mouth opened, and continued to open, forming a doorway through to the apartment proper. As Donal walked inside, he noted the tiny holes inside the mouth's metallic gums, where toxin-delivering fangs could extrude if necessary. Against physical threats, he was well guarded.
And if the city confiscates all property from nonhuman beings?
It had been Senator Blanz who'd proposed the Vital Renewal Bill before the Senate in Fortinium. After his arrest for murder, Blanz had been discredited, disavowed by the Unity Party he had represented. But somehow the legal proposals, and the paranoia that drove them, continued with their own momentum.
Donal looked around the room. A floor of dark-blue glass, furnishings he could never have afforded in life, when he depended on his police pay. Inheriting all this—
“Laura,” he said out loud. “Oh, Laura.”
From vents in the floors, flames rose and moved in slow motion, before disappearing. Donal nodded, then went through to the magnificent bedroom, and sat down. He picked up the book he'd been reading. It was brand-new, called Human: The Apocalypse, last in a series. Donal had bought the earlier books secondhand, from Peat's bookstore, back in the old neighborhood. He read for a time, then put the book down.
I wonder how many hours I've got remaining?
This was something he was getting better at estimating. He thought for a while, then spoke out loud.
“Two hours and seventy-five minutes.”
Donal had always, since his military days, worn his watch on the inside of his wrist. Now, when he turned his hand over, he didn't focus on the position of the hands, but on the gray disk of the watch-face. Like a cake slice, a sliver showed as black, taking up less than a twentieth of the full circle.
“Good guess,” he murmured.
If he held his hand still for long enough, he might even see the tiny decrement as the sliver shrank. Part of him wanted to know what would happen if he let it decrease to zero; but that would be an insult to Laura's memory.
Donal stood and stripped down to his shorts. Then he tapped the top drawer of the bedside cabinet, which slid open.
“Thank you.”
He withdrew the coiled black manticore-gut rope, and the drawer slid shut. It didn't respond to Donal's thanks, because it was ensor-celled but dumb, merely a device. Laura had not allowed bound-wraiths to be trapped inside her apartment's furnishings.
Two hours and seventy-three minutes remaining.
“All right.”
His old boxing coach, Mal O'Brian, had insisted on fitness before technique, and aggression before fitness. The sawdust smell of the old gym came back to Donal as he began to jump rope, a simple double jump, just high enough for the black cord to pass beneath his feet. He kept the rhythm slow.
The cord flicked against the floor, a metronomic tick.
In his early days on patrol, with Fredrix Paulsen as his mentor, Donal had seen a zombie ex-firefighter called Manfred Rifftol, whose shambling form indicated the fate of anyone who failed to keep their resurrected body in shape.
Tick. Tick. Tick.
After a time, Donal switched to harder jumps, good for coordination and footwork. Again, he kept his new rhythm with inhuman precision, before returning to the basic two-foot jump, faster than before. He kept on going.
Tick. Tick.
And going. The first hour passed.
The thing was, while Manfred had survived as a disintegrating zombie, had he chosen to go the route of physical discipline, he would have held things together in a way no living human could.
Tick. Tick.
One hour and fifty minutes elapsed.
Tick …
Two hours.
He kept going until two hours and seventy-two minutes had passed, before stopping with a suddenness that would have been dangerous had he been alive. He tossed the rope onto the bed.
One minute remaining.
Moving quickly, he crossed to the wall and sank cross-legged to the floor. A slender cable was already plugged into the wall socket. Donal placed both hands against his bare chest.
Thirty seconds remaining.
He pressed his fingertips against his skin, hard. A seam split
open, and he hooked the skin back, opening a triangular flap.
Twenty seconds.
Then the pectoral muscle parted, exposing the beating black heart.
Ten.
I could stop. Just not do anything.
But that would be a betrayal of Laura, whose heart this truly was.
Oh, Laura.
Three.
He took hold of the cable, holding its free end just above the socket of his heart.
Two.
Decision.
One.
And he pushed the cable into place. The connection clicked softly.
Donal closed his eyes, rested his hands on his knees, feeling the charge build up in his heart once more.
In the morning, Donal walked to Avenue of the Basilisks. It took an hour, but it was early and he had the time to spare. Not needing to sleep had advantages.
Once inside HQ, he went to shaft 7, and waited for Gertie to take hold of him.
*Arrhennius is in.*
“You mean the commissioner.”
It hadn't occurred to Donal that Commissioner Vilnar might be on first-name terms with an elevator wraith. There was a lot about the Old Man that he didn't know.
*I'll take you there, lover.*
“Thank you, dearest.”
*Maybe I'm not doing you a favor.*
“What does that mean?”
But Gertie said no more as she slowly rose, taking Donal upward at a leisurely rate, as though giving him time to reconsider. Before Laura's death and Senator Blanz's arrest, the task force had suspected Commissioner Vilnar of being a member of the Black Circle. There had been two separate indicators of guilt. First, it turned out to be an order from the commissioner's office that had resulted in Cortindo's being placed in stasis, instead of undergoing postmortem. Second, a thaumaturgical engineer called Kyushen Jyu had retrieved a telephone number from a live suspect's memories, indicating that the illicit orders had come from the commissioner's office.
Yet Commissioner Vilnar's secretary, known as Eyes to every cop in the Department—because of the cables attached to her eyes, linking her to the city's rooftop surveillance mirrors—had turned out to be Alderman Finross's niece, and the Black Circle's source within Police HQ.