Falkirk led her up a zigzagging staircase to the second level, where sullen Tranquility officers of every species walked in packs of three or four, talking jargon to one another. Falkirk stopped at a door with a nameplate that read chief of tranquility. He knocked once and opened it. Inside the corner office, a chocolate pit bull with a handgun strapped to her belt leaned on her desk. A pink scar spliced her face, and a medallion dangled from a chain around her neck. Beside her, hands clasped, stood a cat with fur the color of granite. Cardboard boxes lined the walls, each filled with books, picture frames, and stationery. In the corner, a life-size statue of a human soldier held aloft a dagger, while her free hand clutched her chest.
“Lieutenant,” the pit bull said. “I’m glad you’re safe.”
“What’s going on in here?” Falkirk asked, pointing to the boxes.
“Right, sorry for the mess. My predecessor insisted on having a suite up here, away from the action. But I’m moving downstairs.”
“You want to be in the middle of all that noise?”
The pit bull smiled. “It will be quiet with me there.”
The smile faded as the chief gave D’Arc a long stare. “It is you,” she said.
“It is.”
“She calls herself D’Arc now, Chief,” Falkirk added. He spelled it for her. “Not Sheba, and not the Mother.”
“D’Arc, of course,” the chief said. “I’m Wawa. This is my assistant, Grissom.”
The cat nodded.
“Grissom is about to bring us some tea.” She pointed to the door, and the cat obeyed.
Wawa approached D’Arc. “We’ve met before, on Golgotha. Though you might not remember.”
“I don’t. But I’ve heard the story many times.”
“Mort(e) gave me this St. Jude medal,” Wawa said. The medallion featured an image of a human in a long robe, with a ring surrounding his head, like a sun. The Old Man had never mentioned it. Perhaps he didn’t want her to know that he once gave a present to another dog.
“How is he?” Wawa asked.
“He’s fine. Healthy. Stubborn.”
“I’m not surprised he stayed away.”
“I told him to.”
Wawa glanced at Falkirk.
“I needed to see all this for myself,” D’Arc said. “To do this on my own.” It was the first time she had used this rehearsed line since leaving the ranch, and she was already sick of it.
“To do this on your own,” Wawa said. “That includes sailing the al-Rihla, I’m told.”
Falkirk didn’t tell her that he added the al-Rihla to his report. The husky lowered his head, embarrassed. D’Arc’s tail dropped between her legs. The al-Rihla—this fantasy of exploring the world—suddenly felt like a terrible idea. The chief seemed to enjoy the tension she created.
The door squeaked open. Grissom entered with a tray of cups and a teapot. Wawa asked him to set it on the checkered rug by the windows. “We can talk about the expedition later,” she said. “For now, I want to hear about this spider.”
The cat left them to it. They sat in a triangle, the light from the window forming a trapezoid on the floor around them. Falkirk went first, talking about his meeting with the beavers. D’Arc sipped the tea, noting how different this filtered water tasted from the stuff she brewed on the ranch. When Falkirk finished, D’Arc told the chief about life on the ant farm, and the request for help from Lodge City. As they each gave their own accounts of the battle with Gulaga, Wawa leaned in closer, holding the cup to her mouth but not taking a sip.
“So you’re convinced that this spider was intelligent,” Wawa asked.
“Yes,” Falkirk said. “But I don’t think it could communicate. Not like the fish-heads.”
The pit bull forced down a mouthful of her drink.
“So when do we get started?” Falkirk asked.
Wawa placed the saucer near the edge of her desk, causing the spoon to jingle. “Special Operations has been reassigned. I’m sorry.”
Falkirk stood up. “Reassigned to what?”
“The murder case.”
“Don’t we have people working on that already?”
“We do. And we need more.”
“Look, I don’t like the murders either, but we’re talking about a much bigger threat here.”
“I’ve been over all of that with the Archon. I was overruled.”
“What happened?”
Wawa glanced at the statue of the human. The woman’s neck had a ring carved into it, as did her wrist and ankle. The eyes opened wide at the sight of something terrifying floating above. “New priorities,” Wawa said.
Falkirk paced the floor. “I knew it.”
“What are you talking about?” D’Arc said.
“The killer is targeting people who have used the translator,” Wawa said. “The Prophet could be in danger. Nothing else matters until this situation gets resolved.”
D’Arc remembered now—The Sons of Adam, the humans who protected Michael. They claimed that their leader killed a dog during the war with her bare hands.
“The SOA doesn’t have jurisdiction over Tranquility,” Falkirk said.
“No, but the Archon does.”
“Oh, and our fearless leader would never disagree with the Sons of Adam.”
“Lieutenant—”
“The Prophet’s in a bunker! No one’s even seen him for months.”
“Lieutenant, when you’re done with your tantrum, I’d like to continue.”
“Yes, Chief.”
“The sooner we can solve this case, the sooner we can get back to the anomalies. And there is some good news.”
Wawa opened a drawer in her desk and lifted out a metal box. “Grab that teapot,” she said to Falkirk. “I want to show you something.”
“Should she—” he said, gesturing to D’Arc. “Can she stay for this?”
“She’s part of our officer exchange program, isn’t she?”
D’Arc smiled. She tried to imagine what Falkirk had told the chief in his message to her—maybe something about how she promised to feed him to the ants when they first met.
The lid squeaked as Wawa opened the box, reached inside, and pulled out a piece of metal—a pistol, unlike any D’Arc had ever seen. The stock and the barrel were the same silvery color. The gun resembled a laser that a spaceman would fire in some old comic book.
Wawa flipped a latch on the pistol, which opened the breach. She told Falkirk to pour the hot water into the opening. He hesitated. “Just do it,” she said. With the barrel full, Wawa clicked it shut again. She pressed a button on the handle, and the pistol came to life with a humming noise. A red light blinked on the side.
“Get behind me,” she said. D’Arc and Falkirk exchanged glances and then hid behind the chief. The red light on the gun switched to blue. Wawa aimed at the statue and fired. A projectile burst on the strator’s face, followed by debris pinging off the walls.
The door flung open, and Grissom cautiously poked his head into the room.
“It’s okay,” Wawa said. “Wait outside.” Grissom closed the door without a word.
Falkirk walked over to the statue and ran his hands over the strator’s face. There was no damage. A fragment of the projectile came to rest near D’Arc’s foot. She plucked it from the floor. It was a mere piece of ice, the cold burning her fingers.
“All of the murder victims had a bullet wound and no bullet,” Wawa said. “I think they were killed with one of these.”
Wawa explained that the autopsies had yielded no clues, so she asked her team to investigate all prewar weapons, including those still in development. This device came out of a joint American-Israeli project, based at an R&D facility in Virginia. At close range, the ice bullet could puncture the skull and then melt, leaving no trace.
“So the murderer has to
be a human,” Falkirk said.
“Or maybe another user. Who knows how that device can scramble a person’s brain?”
They would need to interview the remaining users in the city. But that meant finding people who had yet to come forward. Though many former users served as advisors to Tranquility, others neglected to report this experience when applying for asylum. It made sense; many people, animal and human, condemned the Queen’s experiments. And with a killer on the loose, the new residents had yet another incentive to keep their mouths shut.
“D’Arc, do you know how to use a computer?” Wawa asked.
D’Arc told the chief about a laptop she had salvaged a year earlier. She got it to work, and managed to type some words and save the files. Then the computer died.
“That puts you ahead of most people in this town,” Wawa said.
“I’m only staying a few weeks,” D’Arc said, like a reaction she could not control.
“Good,” Wawa said. “That’s all the time we have. By then, all the users will be dead. I’ll be fired. A fish-head might even be in charge of Tranquility.”
She told Falkirk to give D’Arc a tour of the place. Then they would have to get to work. Falkirk had more to say, but the chief gave him a look that said the meeting was over. After exchanging goodbyes, D’Arc and Falkirk walked out, stepping around the melted puddles from the ice gun.
Shortly after starting the tour, somewhere between the cadet training facility and the crime lab, D’Arc acknowledged that Mort(e) was right about one thing: Hosanna was a sprawling mess of a city, many years away from the promise it showed. Entire neighborhoods needed reconstruction. The administrators would have to figure out how to develop the wetlands near the river, and to decontaminate the abandoned factories. Meanwhile, the lights at headquarters occasionally flickered, a garbage fire burned outside one of the windows, and the line of citizens waiting to file a complaint gained more people by the minute. And despite all of that, D’Arc already knew that she would be staying here for longer than a few weeks.
Falkirk took her to the garage. Inside, two rat mechanics worked on a squad car. D’Arc assumed that they were installing an engine that ran on vegetable oil.
“Of course the husky gets a nice female for a partner,” one of the rats said.
“Yeah, Skydog over here gets all the perks!” the other one said.
“It’s good to be back,” Falkirk said with a sigh. “I missed you guys.”
“How come we don’t get a nice rat princess to train as a mechanic? I want one with a real fancy name. Like Elizabeth. Or Victoria.”
“Or Alexandra,” the other rat said.
Falkirk put an end to the banter by asking if he could test-drive one of the cars. The rats insisted that he pick any one he wanted. The husky chose a motorcycle—a red one with a tinted windshield. The rats bent over with laughter, calling him a show-off. When Falkirk said that they would be able to see better on a cycle, the rats laughed even harder.
“We can take a car, if you want,” Falkirk said to D’Arc.
“The motorcycle is fine. Either one will be a first for me.”
Falkirk got on and told her she could grip his belt. Sitting this close to him, D’Arc recalled the first time she had smelled his fur, that morning at the ranch. Though she panicked then, the scent made her feel safe now, like she was part of a pack.
Falkirk revved the engine. The vibration rattled her skeleton.
“It’s good to have you back, Lieutenant,” the first rat said.
“What would I do without our morning conversations?” Falkirk asked. He put the bike in gear and rolled forward. D’Arc almost fell off.
“Hold on tight, puppy!” the other rat said. “Skydog likes to fly!”
They sped along the waterfront, toward the dam that blocked off the river. Falkirk weaved between a handful of vehicles, mostly dump trucks hauling debris from the construction sites. In the heart of the city stood a tower made of stone, with the feet of a statue fastened to the top. The rest of the statue had been blasted away. That building, the former City Hall, served as the headquarters for the Archon and his council.
“And look at that,” Falkirk said, motioning toward the river. A ship swayed in the current. Painted a gleaming white, the vessel was about two hundred feet long, with windmills spinning on the deck. The word al-rihla was stenciled on the side.
“That’s a . . . That’s a cutter ship!” she said. “Navy. Or Coast Guard, maybe.”
Falkirk laughed. “See what I mean? Maybe you should apply.”
As they got closer to the dam, Falkirk explained that the river swelled at this point, creating a pool and a new nature preserve. The dam itself formed a bridge to the New Jersey side. A military checkpoint forced the vehicles to form a line for inspection.
Falkirk parked the bike on the exit ramp, right beside the pool. He tapped his nails on the handlebar. “I’ve been thinking about your new name,” he said. “I’m not sure if I like it.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“We have enough people around here who claim to speak for God. And then you name yourself after a human warrior who got herself killed doing that very thing.”
“She was brave. She was a young girl who took command of an army.”
“Maybe it was bravery. Maybe it was foolishness. On everyone’s part.”
“Well, what does your name mean?”
“Actually, it comes from the same era as yours, give or take a few years.”
Falkirk adopted the name shortly after surviving a skirmish on the Canadian side of Lake Erie. An American armored division abandoned over a thousand soldiers and rolled away in the night. The infantry was left to fight in the dark. A total slaughter. The next morning, Falkirk’s brother told him that it resembled a medieval battle he once read about, in which the cavalry left the foot soldiers behind.
“I didn’t pick the name to glorify warfare,” Falkirk said. “It’s a reminder of the folly of war. That’s stuck on me forever.”
“I’m keeping D’Arc.”
“Fine. But remember that there are people who need you for their own ends. They might speak for God, but they rarely listen. And sometimes they hear what they want to hear.”
A police car rolled up beside them, lights whirring. The driver, a raccoon, held a microphone to his mouth. “What’s your business there?” Falkirk slapped his ID on the windshield. The raccoon leaned forward and read it. “Sorry, Lieutenant,” he said.
Falkirk pocketed the ID as the car drove away, leaving a cloud of grease in its wake. He pointed to a building to the south—the cadet barracks. D’Arc would stay there until they could find a place for her. “Though we could put your name into the housing registry.”
“I don’t need anything,” she said. “No special treatment. I can stay at the barracks.”
“It gets really cramped there.”
“That’s fine.”
He watched her for a second to detect any hesitation. She would not give it to him. She had dealt with the Old Man enough to know when someone was trying to read her mind.
On the way to the barracks, Falkirk described his own experiences there. After his demotion from the airship crew, he bunked with the new recruits, most of whom had just arrived from the countryside. The building was once a high school. The academy gutted it to make room for the cadets, but it lacked a real kitchen, galley, or decent living quarters. “So stay away from the protein porridge at dinner time,” he said. “And use the hot plate in the cafeteria to boil your drinking water.”
“What about breakfast?”
“No breakfast. I’m picking you up at dawn. We’re getting started right away.”
CHAPTER 13
Devolution
The house settled, dusty and quiet. The forest stilled. The hours inched along.
Mort(e) spent the
first day without her pacing the abandoned Alpha pen, sometimes grinding his foot into the divots left by the herd. Their oily pheromones lingered, and even the soaking rain could not wash away the smell. He wondered how long it would last. All things disperse, he thought. Given time, the wind carries everything away.
He checked the inventory. The salted meat would get him through the warm months, and he would plant some tubers in the next week. The two plastic barrels were full of water. The bees did not notice how things had changed, and continued their work of producing honey. Mort(e) did a weapons check, testing every pistol and rifle, no longer caring if the gunfire alerted people in the forest. All but two of the guns still worked. He had enough supplies for a long trip into the west with Sheba. With D’Arc. But they would anchor him here until she returned.
How many humans lived and died like this during the war? There must have been thousands of them hiding in cabins, caves, and bunkers, convinced that they were the last of their kind. They probably formed relationships with inanimate objects and covered all the mirrors so they wouldn’t have to watch themselves age. They wrote letters to dead people and etched homemade tattoos into their skin. They fiddled with the knobs on CB radios for hours, mistaking every squeak and whistle for a voice. They ran out of liquor and then, while dying from an infected cut, they remembered that the alcohol could have sanitized the wound.
A few days later, when the clouds broke and D’Arc had not returned, Mort(e) gave in and finally wept.
He let the tubers go unattended for an extra week before planting them. Though he didn’t care for the work, he concluded that starving was not a good way to die. The smell of fresh dirt distracted him from the idea of dropping everything and going to Hosanna. The reasons to stay on the ranch were solid. He could miss D’Arc on the road, or she could get angry with him for following her, and the whole plan would backfire. But neither reason could stop him from thinking about it every waking hour.
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