Kingdom

by Anderson O'Donnell

  Campbell moved from grave to grave, repeating the prayers Jael had taught him. He spoke to her mother; her grandfather, her sisters, to the anonymous crosses and the broken, ruined children whose lives had been given in the name of Project Exodus; he explained that tonight there would be redemption. And as the sun began to dip below the horizon, Campbell smiled and, before turning toward the desert, told Jael’s people he’d be joining them soon.

  As darkness stole across the land, al-Salaam continued to shadow Campbell, following him as he moved from the slums to one of the dozens of industrial zones that stretched out into the Chihuahuan desert. The red lights of the Morrison Biotech arcology were visible on the distant horizon, stretching so far into the heavens that, from the desert floor, they were almost indistinguishable from the other celestial bodies and strange lights visible in the dying summer sky.

  Campbell stopped in front of a multistoried brick building accented only by a huge red neon sign stating “Heritage Industries,” but the H and S, the beginning and the end, had burnt out and no one bothered to replace them. This was it, al-Salaam decided. This is where he would confront Campbell. The old man would suffer and then the old man would die.

  Campbell entered the factory through a backdoor and al-Salaam followed, moving like a ghost. The only source of light was a faint glow emerging from a giant cylindrical tower jutting out from atop the factory, pouring smoke up toward the heavens, and it was through this half-light that Morrison’s lieutenant followed the old man, taking an elevator that went down instead of up, pushing further into the earth’s crust, creaking and groaning as it struggled down an ancient shaft. Several times during the descent the elevator paused, as though it were hesitant to go much further into the earth. And each time it paused al-Salaam waited, the temperature rising, and this patience elicited an odd metallic groan from the machine, the gears yielding before the assassin’s will, shuddering back to life and pushing further down into the darkness.

  When the freight elevator lurched to a stop and its doors retracted into the sides of the wall, al-Salaam slid out onto a steel ramp, savoring the smell of sulfur and burning metal that strangled all life from the atmosphere. It was a fitting place to confront the man who betrayed Michael Morrison.

  The ramp leading away from the elevator ushered him into the belly of a dark, sweltering foundry. Rusted hooks and pulleys crisscrossed overhead, carrying the tools of industry back and forth, up and down. To al-Salaam’s left and right, conveyor belts descended from the ceiling, forming a giant V as they funneled garbage and other disregarded scrap toward the center of the room, where they were dumped into a enormous cylinder- shaped vat of bubbling molten held aloft by two mammoth titanium prongs. Beneath the prongs, the nothingness stretched out toward infinity and al-Salaam was pleased: He had indeed chosen the right place to confront Campbell.

  For each piece of forsaken scrap that tumbled out of the darkness and into the molten, steam belched into the atmosphere before drifting up toward the rudimentary filtering system installed in the ceiling above. Eventually, these noxious fumes wound their way through the filtering system, primitive as it was, and into the plant’s primary smokestack. This main smokestack served as a marker for the tomb these lands had become, blasting out deadly chemicals into an iridescent sky. And it was miles below this poisoned sky that al-Salaam reached the main walkway, finally falling on his prey: Campbell was standing a ten yards or so away at the edge of the platform staring down into the swirling, expectant molten.

  “It is time,” al-Salaam explained, as he reached Campbell, placing his black-gloved hand on the old man’s bony, jagged shoulder. Al-Salaam waited; this was the moment when they begged, when they pleaded with the death dealer for one more day, one more chance. It almost made him sad, the feverish hope he sometimes encountered. Why didn’t they understand? Such decisions were not the assassin’s to make; he brought death and dust and that was all. There was no negotiating with death.

  The temperatures were soaring now and al-Salaam squeezed Campbell’s shoulder, spinning the old man around so that he would know who bestowed oblivion upon him and why. He heard some of the old man’s brittle bones crack, a noise that echoed out across the molten, reverberating off the steel and titanium and al-Salaam was pleased. But then something went wrong: Al-Salaam was facing Campbell, staring into the old man’s bloodshot, wild eyes, but what the assassin saw in those eyes filled him with a great unease: There was no fear, not even resignation; only acceptance. Acceptance and triumph; those were the only emotions that stared back at al-Salaam, emotions that had long been absent from these lands.

  Smiling, Campbell took a step backward, away from al-Salaam and toward the edge of the platform. With the light from the molten glowing red against the side of the old man’s face, he took another step backward and al-Salaam realized what was happening. He let out a howl of frustration and lunged forward, grabbing at Campbell as the old man moved toward the edge of the platform. This was not how it was supposed to be; this was not the betrayer’s decision to make.

  And then it happened: Just before Campbell plunged over the edge, he surged forward, and grabbed his would-be assassin’s leg; a second later gravity took Campbell but he had caught

  Morrison’s lieutenant by surprise and now al-Salamm too was tumbling over the side of the platform, the steel under his feet vanishing and there was only the hot dead air between him and the fire. He was falling and so was Campbell; they were now bound together and as they fell the old man put his arms around Morrison’s lieutenant, embraced him, and began whispering in his ear, whispering words he had not heard in ages, words the old man had learned somewhere else, in his time away from the desert, prayers and truths that made every inch of the assassin’s body quiver with fury, and al-Salaam was screaming, a terrible, vengeful cry but still the old man continued to whisper in his ear as they plunged toward the molten, joining the stream of industrial by-products that fell like rain from the giant ceiling chute.

  And then, al-Salaam screeched in agony. But it was not the physical pain, or even the fact that he, the great deceiver, the death-dealer, had been tricked, that caused al-Salaam the greatest torment in these last few seconds of his life. Rather, it was the look of serenity on the old man’s face as he hit the molten and his physical form melted away that caused Morrison’s assassin such despair. Even as the fire consumed Campbell, there was something in the old man’s expression that, in an instant, made manifest a terrible truth: It was al-Salaam who had been deceived, not by this old man but by his master. There was some fundamental truth this Campbell knew, a truth that al-Salaam had somehow been denied, one that now he would never know.

  As he died, the assassin’s body seemed to shimmer on the surface for a moment, refusing to acknowledge the inevitable. And then, in an instant, he was gone, just another sacrifice on the altar of industry. The spot where his body had landed was filled by other pieces of falling garbage and scrap, which were in turn replaced as soon as they faded away. And then it was over, al-Salaam’s remains indistinguishable from Campbell’s as they drifted up the smokestack together before filtering out into the sickly pre-dawn sky.

  Chapter 27

  Tiber City

  Nov. 8, 2015

  1:19 a.m.

  For the past three nights, Michael Morrison had sat alone in his Tiber City office, watching the Jungle burn.

  The riots were inevitable: Food shortages, rolling blackouts, and watching the Prince of Progress get his head blown off on national television had brought the city’s denizens to the brink; the recent heat wave had blasted them over the edge.

  Bureaucrats stood before the cameras and promised that the violence was contained, but the constant wail of sirens and the thump-thump-thump of military helicopters and bursts of automatic rifle fire echoing across empty streets told a very different story, one of a city at war, fueled by fear and need and a gnawing dread that crept over the land like a slow poison; of a heat wave so unbearable that the elder
ly were cooked alive in their living rooms, their saggy gray skin stuck to the plastic-covered furniture, television still blaring when their eyeballs burst; of digi-evangelists pushing End of Days theory complete with warmed over Book of Revelation imagery; of a Zero artist underground alive with whispers of strange data spikes, of new prophecies appearing deep within the codes, of ghosts in the subway pleading to travelers with icy, metallic moans, of dreams where data streamed over abandoned, burnt-out cities, twisting and slicing across the neon and the gold and the light—there was always artificial light, pale and weak but jacked up to impossible wattage so there was never any rest, just nervous systems withering under the 24/7 assault of content, the brain bouncing in a thousand different directions, enslaved by artifice, jacked in but shut off, turned away from the heavens, chained to the earth—of a city without a soul, the desert reborn. Of Morrison’s kingdom, come.

  Morrison poured a glass of scotch—neat, aged 18 years—slid open the office’s glass door, and stepped out onto a large, white-tiled balcony. The air was an oppressive—lifeless heat mingled with the rank smell of burning plastics and even from this great height, dozens of stories above the city, Morrison could perceive the fear and tension; it was there, clear as the fires burning on the horizon, and in the distance there was the roll of thunder as if nature was readying a violent response to the city’s turmoil. Morrison took a long, slow slip from his glass and, his eyes still locked on the city, allowed himself a moment to savor his triumphs.

  Exodus had taken an unexpected turn. The Omega gene proved to be a divine failsafe, a jealous Creator’s means of guarding the ultimate intellectual property secret. The Order, like most of mankind, wanted to believe the soul was some sort of divine conduit, a link between man and God that could carry on after death; Morrison knew that was bullshit. The Omega gene was the ultimate poison pill, a way of ensuring man could never break free from the divine; it fostered some sense of connection, of community—but to proclaim those emotions were positive things was absurd; as far as Morrison was concerned, taking such a position was like arguing that heroin addiction was good because shooting smack made people feel good and once they were addicted, withdrawal was a bitch. Hooked on the divine; Yahweh as the alpha and omega of the dope game.

  Not that Morrison could begrudge the God responsible for the Omega gene’s design; in fact, he was impressed. And now, instead of trying to reproduce Omega, Exodus was going to do the next best thing: co-opt it.

  For the last month, they had been holding Dylan Fitzgerald at the biotech arcology in New Mexico in order to run a series of tests. The purpose of these tests was both simple: to discern whether Dylan had a functioning soul. The results of the tests were unanimous: Dylan Fitzgerald had the unique genetic composition of his father but, unlike the old man, Dylan inherited a functioning Omega gene. There was no question as to the source of Dylan’s Omega gene, of his soul: Given the fact that Omega was excluded from his father’s genetic code, Dylan must have inherited his soul from his mother. In fact, considered Morrison, the word “functioning” wasn’t even fair; during some of the tests, the brain activity associated with Dylan’s Omega gene was off the fucking charts.

  Fitzgerald, not Heffernan, would be the one. Morrison would position Fitzgerald as the heir to the Exodus throne. And even if the Progress Party never captured the White House, did that matter? While an organic Omega gene was non-transferrable, and an artificial soul was unsustainable, perhaps a combination of the two, Morrison thought, could be both. And judging from Dylan’s brain activity, breeding the Exodus genetic code with organic DNA could produce explosive “soul” activity in the brain. Customizable human souls, coming soon to a CitiMart near you. Morrison took another sip of his scotch and smiled.

  True, Campbell had escaped, but al-Salaam had been dispatched to follow the old man to the Order’s remaining camps, where Morrison’s death dealer would kill Campbell and every last monk before vanishing, without a trace, into the desert. Indeed, Campbell’s actions were expected, and now, the old man was no longer necessary; the final act was set to begin: Young Fitzgerald was en route to Tiber City. Morrison would meet with him and explain everything. He would show him the kingdom; the young man would not refuse—how could he?

  Back in his darkened office, the phone was ringing and Morrison took one final look at the fires burning along the horizon before turning back inside. The computer monitor on his desk was glowing with a notice of an incoming call from the arcology. Morrison frowned before pressing the screen to accept the call.

  “Go ahead,” he growled.

  One of his security teams’ captains delivered the news:

  Al-Salaam was dead.

  Morrison roared, squeezing his glass so hard it shattered, slicing into his palm. For a moment he fell silent, watching the blood first pool in his palm before it began spilling over the edge of his hand, splashing onto the shards of glass now scattered across the floor.

  “Kill them. Kill them all,” Morrison fsnarled, before snapping off the monitor and turning back to the window, back to the night on fire, blood still trickling down his right hand, the crimson pool on the floor growing larger as the call and response of automatic gunfire crackled somewhere in the night.

  Two helicopters—gleaming beasts of steel and metal and war—carried four eight-man teams from the arcology into the border slums, blasting low across the desert toward the festering sprawl on the horizon. There were lights in the southwestern sky, strange swirling colors and shooting stars that maybe weren’t stars. Hard men in black Kevlar sat on the edge of the helicopters, staring straight ahead, focused on the digital read-out glowing green in the corner of their goggles, their boots dangling loose over the sand and dying brush and hard red rock, lights from inside the copters reflecting off automatic weapons into the darkness.

  A drone strike had been discussed but dismissed—Morrison demanded this mission be conducted with a personal touch. And so the men strapped high-carbon steel bayonets to their automatic rifles and waited as satellites transmitted detailed schematics of the target: an abandoned mission on the edge of the desert, several miles past an old train yard. And although the satellite photos showed no surface activity, there were tunnels that twisted under the mission, and it was in these tunnels that Morrison’s men would find the enemy.

  When the copters set down outside the mission it became clear that the information received from the satellite was inaccurate; many of the access points and entryways had vanished—if they had even existed. Instead, there was a single, arching entranceway, 10 or 12 feet high, carved out of the stone and governed by a heavy wooden door divided into halves. The bad intel set off some bad vibes, and Morrison’s men went in hot, ramming down the door to the mission, the lights from their rifle scopes crisscrossing as they cut through the darkened building, moving in teams of two down into the tunnels, night vision on, safeties off. There was no sign of life, just claustrophobia and boots scraping over crumbling stone and the frescos carved into the walls: Crudely etched images of dead men resurrected and archangels with burning swords watched the mercenaries pass through the pitch black tunnels.

  At the end of the tunnels there was a heavy metal door, locked and reinforced from the inside, but three thunderous booms from a twelve-gauge loaded with M-1030 breaching rounds shattered the bolt mechanism. Masks on someone roared as the door popped open and one of the mercenaries heaved a flash-bang grenade through the breach. There was a violent, split-second burst of light followed by a high-pitched ringing and then the door was gone, knocked aside as Morrison’s men stormed into the camp.

  It only took a few seconds for the mercenaries to realize the camp was empty—bayonets jammed into the mounds of blankets piled on top of cots spilled cheap yellow stuffing.

  It would take the men another 10 minutes to realize that the paint on the symbol—an asterisk in a circle drawn across the ceiling—was still wet.

  Chapter 28

  Tiber City

  N
ovember 2015

  The last thing Dylan could remember was being with Meghan at the Gas-n-Go, ripping out the pages of his father’s journal and tossing them into the flame. Everything after that was a series of half-conscious sensations: grays and blacks and there might have been a helicopter; there might have been larger aircraft, engines firing up and the shake and rattle as a jet blasted down a runway—there was transportation, movement of some kind, but Dylan was drifting in and out of consciousness so observational precision was out of the question.

  And then the machines came—monsters of steel and industrial plastics and sightless scanners that hovered over him, inches from his face, moving across his body with inhuman patience. Conveyor belts fed him into claustrophobia-inducing plastic tubes that shook and whirred; he woke up screaming on more than one occasion, with thick black wires running from the back of his skull that he was too afraid to pull out.

  He was in some kind of research facility, maybe a hospital, maybe something military—there were guards with guns and the sounds of boots echoing down hallways.

  At some point an old man began to appear, sitting beside Dylan while the machines swirled around them, robotic arms hovering, grasping, whirling through the over-conditioned air, the sensation of automated movement always present on Dylan’s peripheral. The old man, who said his name was Campbell, was accompanied by the smell of whiskey that would slice through the hallucinations. And then the old man would talk, his voice hoarse yet urgent, telling Dylan impossible things, crazy things—secret monastic orders and the truth about the human soul, about Dylan’s own soul, about the desert: the same things that were in his father’s journal. He saw the old man’s back, the tattoo that marked his flesh—the same symbol on the memory stick. Dylan didn’t respond, couldn’t respond; he could only squeeze his eyes shut, calling out for Meghan, rage consuming the pain, the fear, fueled by the realization that whatever was happening to him now, his father had suffered worse. In his lucid moments, he was even able to put a name to his tormentor: Morrison.