Twelve Days

by Steven Barnes

  “Y’all be mindful now,” Tony said. “No way to talk about a lady.”

  * * *

  Pain such as she had not known since the horrible days in London coursed through her body as they descended into the mine, toward the laboratory within. Although she was strong on the outside, within her, Indra Gupta was not the goddess Shakti, or Kali, or even their human equivalents … but merely the girl again.

  Where was Daddy? Where was Mommy? Where was someone to take her hand…?

  That voice was another, younger woman’s. A voice from another life, and she banished it.

  The man was hurt. She had broken his weapon, his right arm, damaged his right leg. He was done. But his woman and her children comforted and supported him, helped him below. And his companion, the large man, had clearly risked his life for friendship.

  What of her own family?

  The ones she had recruited from the prison. They guarded their captives, as they had been directed. But something had changed. Their belief in her invulnerability had been shaken. They watched her with caution, whispering among themselves.

  Not one of them offered her help, an arm. A smile.

  “You all right?” Killinger asked as the elevator reached the lower level. Meaning: how’s my meal ticket?

  That was the expression, wasn’t it? She frightened them. She promised and provided rewards. They followed her. But if she was weak, even for a moment, like any school of sharks they would turn on her when they smelled blood in the water. Kill them all, and take the books in the library, and burn everything she had built to the ground.

  She had sent away the fools who had honestly believed in her. And kept the animals who knew what she was, and who she had been fool enough to mistake for family.

  What the Dorsey woman had was family. What Terry had chosen was family.

  She, Indra Gupta, had created nothing but a pack.

  She was torn. Wished that she could have time to think about what was happening, consider it.

  Was it possible … just possible that she had been wrong?

  It was too late now. She wanted to ask this woman, for whom the man would die:

  Is this love?

  * * *

  Exhaustion and fear had no limits, knew no depths.

  Bleeding, broken, and under guard, Olympia and her shattered clan descended into the mine. When darkness yielded to incandescent light and a half-deserted laboratory, she was too tired to be surprised. “Adam Ludlum’s original notes were quite thorough,” Madame Gupta’s voice echoed against the stone. “He first revealed his abilities in a Faraday cage, isolated from electromagnetic radiation. It was theorized that such radiation somehow blocks the ability. That this is why we no longer live in the time of miracles. Down here, three hundred feet beneath the surface, it is even easier to isolate and express the capacity.”

  Who was this Adam Ludlum? How did he relate to the rest of this? Her mind was so fuzzy with pain that she couldn’t make sense of it all.

  There were only three technicians to augment the four surviving guards. Gloved, Gupta’s minions began to hook Hannibal up to the machines. His eyes were wide and staring.

  They locked with Olympia’s in a way she had never seen, pleading with her. “What are we doing here?” Olympia asked. She noticed that the blood had already crusted on Gupta’s wounds. Oh, God. This woman wasn’t even human. She couldn’t be hurt. Couldn’t be stopped.

  They were doomed. Terry had fought a long, hard, impossible battle to win a single moment’s advantage, and had failed. All was lost.

  Gupta took her arm, and guided Olympia to a side room, an office with a desk, a sink with a sharps disposal unit, a leather chair, and a table suitable for medical evaluations. Gupta switched on an overhead fluorescent light. With three fingers like spikes she pushed Olympia up against the wall.

  “You have one chance,” Gupta said, as if reading her mind. “One chance to save your family. You will convince your boy to do as I ask.”

  “I can’t,” Olympia said. “He can’t hear me the way other children do. He won’t just follow orders…” Not quite truth, not quite a lie. She prayed Gupta wouldn’t know the difference.

  “You are his mother, the woman the man I had chosen chose, and placed above me. You are a family. You have this thing called ‘love.’ Show me that you are worthy of his choice, their love.” Blink-quick Gupta slapped her face, and Olympia staggered back. The slap was not hard, but it was shocking, more an electrical jolt than a blow. Numbing. Disorienting at a time when she desperately needed her every sense.

  “Do not tell me what doctors say. We are not mere minds and bodies. If we are, then he is useless to me, and you will all die. Him last, watching you and your daughter die first.”

  Olympia’s eyes burned with tears.

  Gupta came closer. “Pray that the real Hannibal is in there. Somewhere. That what we see and hear of him is like a voice from the bottom of a well, distorted by echoes. Speak to him. Do this, do your best, and you may survive this. But do not attempt to thwart me.”

  Sobs bubbled up in her throat until she lost control and babbled out her terror. “What is it you want me to do? What is it you really want him to do? Tell me the truth, or I can’t help you.”

  Gupta was regaining her poise. Regaining the false good mother air. “Fair enough. Fair enough. You are an intelligent woman. A reporter.”

  “Yes.”

  “You stand at the heart of the most important story in the history of mankind. We are changing the world.”

  “You?”

  The corners of Gupta’s mouth curled up into a death-head smile beneath the bloodied skin. “Haven’t you been reading the papers?”

  A worm of horrible suspicion was working its way to the surface. “You? How? It’s poison … or microwaves…”

  Her mind swirled. And yet, on some level she had known. Had known since Maria’s death. And she’d known that she knew, and that she was keeping the knowledge from percolating fully into her conscious mind. It was just too big, too frightening, too impossible.

  “There is a truth beyond truths,” Gupta said. “A reality beyond realities. And one is the perception of separateness. The mystic Savagi, here in the most sacred, the most valuable book in the world, wrote of this in his divine Transformations.”

  “I don’t understand.” We know of no mechanism precise and powerful enough to accomplish this.

  “You needn’t. All you need to know is that the world is not ending. Only the lives of a few of its billions. And from the death of those few, comes a new life for me and mine.”

  “What?” Olympia blinked. Something was lurking within Gupta’s words, just out of conscious perception, a shape in the fog.

  “Those few control the financial heart of a world. Money is the blood of the modern world, and I will in one stroke undo centuries of pain.”

  “How can you do that? What would give you that power?”

  “All you need to know is that after today the deaths stop. There is no apocalypse, except that which yawns for you and yours. And that if you help me take this last step, your family will be richly rewarded. With far more than just your lives.”

  “What do you want him to do?”

  The skull shape disappeared, replaced by the kindly mother. “Look at a computer screen. Drink a chocolate milk.”

  “Chocolate milk. What’s in it?” Olympia asked. “Don’t lie to me, please.”

  Gupta examined her shrewdly. “Yes. All right. Mixed into the cocoa is a mild hypnotic, something to help him relax. More harmless than the medications given to children with ADD … but it will help him focus. Allow him to do what he must do. Your next decision will lift your family to heights of power or sink them to depths of pain. We see in this moment. We will speak to each other as two women. Two mothers.”

  * * *

  Indra Gupta was lying. Olympia could feel it. What had the man said? A possible way to kill at a distance? That the ultimate weapon might well be
the human mind itself, rather than artificial devices it could create. The mind. “Entanglement.” And … DNA. How hard would it be to get DNA samples from twenty or thirty powerful men? Blood. Hair. Skin. Saliva. Semen. And if you couldn’t get the sample, you just kept them off the list.

  Easy peasy.

  Her mind was racing, trying to understand. Running out of time. “You are a mother?”

  “The mother to a new world. And in that new world a child like Hannibal will be elevated above all. And as he is your son, you, Olympia Dorsey, will stand with him.”

  “And you want him to … make contact with these men and women. And then?”

  Gupta looked at her almost pityingly. “Awaken them from the dream of life.”

  A stone rolled onto her chest. Gupta wanted to use Hannibal to kill people? But how? Her mind offered no answer. Yet, Olympia believed the woman with all her soul. The air near Gupta vibrated with the truth of her words.

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Yes. Now. Parents must awaken, if their children would be safe. Within the dream is morality. The universe does not care. If you would have him slumber a little longer, you must act. He could be a great man. A whole man. I will teach him secrets undreamed. You would be mother to a young god. Or you can watch these men who sought to save you die, and your daughter die, screaming your name. And then you will die, in front of your son. The choice is yours.”

  She leaned close. Her eyes were as bright as coals. “I will drag Hannibal out of his cocoon and splinter your bones in front of him. Do not test me.”

  A contest of wills. Olympia was the first to look away. If she said yes … they might live. But at what cost? Could Hannibal survive such horror? Could his soul? The world spun. She heard herself say: “Take me to my son.”

  She was escorted back out. Examining each face she passed in turn. Seeking a way out of the trap. Seeing nothing except the overhead light tubes, the abandoned computer stations, the rock walls that had once seemed so exciting and mysterious, and now seemed to be the very gates of hell.

  Terry and his friend Mark slumped against the wall, battered and broken and heavily guarded. No help there.

  “Mom,” Nicki said. “Did she hurt you?”

  “No,” she said.

  “Whose blood is on your cheek?”

  Olympia stopped, breathing slowly. Gears turning behind closed eyes. My cheek? The slap? Blood on Gupta’s hand …

  Her own blood.

  And … a door opened.

  Bless you, Sloan. Bless you, darling Nicki. Bless that bearded geek at the White House briefing.

  She kissed her daughter. Went to Hannibal. He stood in his dirty, torn jeans, and his soiled denim jacket, with his eyes rolled up, stemming from side to side, as if desperately seeking shelter in some internal hidey-hole.

  “Hani,” she whispered to her son. “If you’ve ever heard me, hear me now. Do what they tell you to do.”

  “Do it?” Something touched his eyes. Fear? Hunger?

  “But first,” she said, “give Mommy a kiss.”

  Hannibal’s lips touched her bloody cheek.

  * * *

  The bad man named Tony guided Hannibal to a seat in front of the computer. The computer where, not too long before, he had watched Serge hiding among the soccer balls. Back when he had thought these were nice people. Madame Gupta was pretending to be his friend again. “You are the most powerful boy I’ve ever met. Perhaps that anyone has ever met. I know what you want, and what you need.”

  Liar, liar, pants on fire.

  She stroked his brow with the back of a brown hand. He wanted to bite it.

  No. Wait. Soon.

  “Give me what is mine, and I will reciprocate. No harm will come to those you love, and whose only sin is loving you. And all I want you to do is follow the threads. Connect with each of them. That is all you have to do.”

  One of the technicians gave her a glass of chocolate milk. She, in turn, handed it to Hannibal.

  He turned, looked at his mother, whose eyes were wide with horror.

  She shook her head. No.

  It’s all right, Mommy, he said in silence.

  Hani can do this.

  Hannibal’s eyes were wide. His mind was wide. The world within his mind a nest of broken links. Tangled wiring. Messages using redundant pathways to communicate meaning.

  He knew he had whispered something to his monkey friend, Serge. Knew what had been whispered to him, just below the threshold of consciousness.

  Die for me. That was what he had whispered. Serge had heard. And then … Serge had not been there. He had not realized that, the memory hidden even from himself.

  But now he knew. Somehow, they had made him hurt Serge.

  He saw a universe of energy, infinite fluxing fields and in the midst of those fields, a dozen threads. Running through a profusion of living beings, billions of tiny faces, connecting to twelve very special men and women.

  Hannibal licked his lips. Followed the blood and the coded information as it entered his body. Broken down by juices in the mouth? Crossed the blood-brain barrier where? Another thread, joining the twelve …

  Gupta herself.

  And he veered away from the twelve, gained fire, and headed straight toward her.

  Die for me.

  * * *

  Gupta’s smile wavered. And then … the muscles in her face cramped, hard.

  “What?” She moaned, holding her head in her hands.

  Hannibal turned and looked directly at her. “You shouldn’t have hurt my mommy.”

  Gupta’s gaze went from Hannibal’s eyes to a fleck of blood on his lips. To Olympia’s cheek. To the blood on her own hands. Her blood.

  For all her planning, all her care … blinded by pain and rage, she had made a single, horrible mistake.

  “Stop! Stop!” she screamed and then pain overwhelmed thought and her hands slapped the sides of her head. The security men were staring at her, not at Hannibal.

  And then—the lights went out, leaving the mine in total, terrifying darkness.

  Gupta shrieked and fell to the ground, rolling and shrieking inarticulately, vomiting out a flow of meaningless syllables, agonized glossolalia.

  She could think, barely. But could no longer form words.

  * * *

  Once Hannibal started killing, he could not stop. The breath exhaled by the security team and by the technicians contained cells from the linings of their lungs, millions of expelled motes of flesh. Something Gupta had not considered.

  No one could think of everything. And no one could have known just how deep Hannibal’s well of capacity might be once awakened.

  Hannibal had inhaled those cells with every breath, and they were the key to the DNA of every human being in that underground bunker. In his mind they were like strands of an infinite spider web connecting all the world. He followed the strands through his personal night, found them, gripped them, and twisted them.

  All around him the dark swarmed with screams of horror and pain.

  The lights flickered back to life. The boy stood, smiling like some kind of blood-maddened animal, hands outstretched, fingers outstretched as if playing a harp, as the guards and technicians writhed in agony, dying.

  Olympia shook him. “Hannibal!” she screamed. “Stop it! Stop it now.”

  “All die, Mommy,” he said placidly. “All have to die.”

  Terry and Nicki and Olympia surrounded Hannibal, hugging and kissing him, whispering, doing all they could to drag him back from the abyss. “Come back, Hani,” Nicki said. “You have to come back to us.”

  “All die. All die. All die…”

  “Hannibal,” Terry said, his voice soothing. “There are lines you can’t get back across. Trips you don’t want to take. Don’t do this.”

  Hannibal’s eyes rolled down, focused on Terry’s face. His narrow chest fluttered like hummingbird wings beneath his soiled shirt.

  “Listen to me,” Terry said. He paused. “Listen to
your father.”

  “Daddy?” Hannibal said.

  “For as long as you want me.”

  His eyes were rolled up, exposing the sclera. Just white. Olympia kissed his ear and whispered to him. “Your house, remember, Hannibal? You’ve made that house over and over, again and again. It has everything you’ve ever seen or thought in it, and everything you love. We’re there, too. We can all be there, together.” She glanced at Terry. He nodded.

  Hannibal’s lips quivered, and then tears broke from his eyes in a vast fountain. “Mommy. I love you. Daddy. I missed you so much. Nicki. My Nicki.”

  They held each other.

  Then …

  * * *

  The emergency lights cycled with red and white glare, revolving and flashing in the darkness.

  Mark knelt over Tony, who drooled blood from ears and mouth, mewling like half-crushed roadkill. Tony laughed, a single pain-filled barking sound. “Now … ain’t this a pickle?” he said.

  “For Lee, you bastard,” Mark replied, and hit him once more, in the throat. Tony made ugly sounds, his heels drumming against the ground, and then was still.

  “Lee?” Terry asked.

  “Bought it.”

  “What about Pat?”

  “He bought it, too.” Mark grunted. “But I didn’t like him.” He looked up at the lights. “I think Geek cut those lights.”

  “Little bastard is good.”

  Madame Gupta lay half-curled into a fetal ball. She looked small, and weak, and shattered. And for the first time … old.

  “I see now…” she whispered. And she was crying, the tears welling into a river. “Shiva. Shakti. I see.” She looked at him, eyes already dimming, life draining away with the blood that seeped from every orifice. She looked up at him, and her lips, wet with blood, curled into the beginnings of a smile.

  “Love the boy. Love the woman. There is only…”

  “There is only Shiva,” he whispered. “And Shakti. In all their forms. You freed me.”

  From some inner well of strength, she managed a smile. “Love me … just a little?”

  He cradled her head in his arms, smoothed her brown skin with his fingertips. Their skin, so much alike. Such different paths to the same place. Awareness. It was never, ever too late.