Empyre

by Josh Conviser

  One of the felled raptors regained its footing. It bounded at Laing, flex-torquing its legs to reach head height before firing a Taser dart. Ryan wheeled left, the move evading the dart, but also throwing him right into the path of the raptor's descent. The legs pounded into him, blowing Ryan back. Hitting the deck, the raptor bounced off him, aiming for another shot. Laing swiped its leg, and it fell backward, tucking into a ball to offload its momentum.

  Laing kicked on the speed, sprinting down the length of the hall. The raptor sprang after him, closing the distance between them in arcing lopes. Ryan knew he was quickly running out of options.

  The raptor sprang high. Glancing back, Ryan dove out of the way. Al - most out of the way. The bot adjusted mid-flight, torquing toward its prey. Coming down, one of its legs got caught up in Ryan's sprawled form. The uneven landing threw the raptor off-balance. It careened into one of the plexi panels that ran the length of the hall, blasting through it.

  The flashing suck of decompression turned the hall to chaos. The panel broke out, sucking several techs into the air. With nothing to secure him, Laing had little choice but to follow. He managed a gulp of partially pressurized air before being ripped into free fall. Amid the rush of acceleration, he held his breath, knowing that any intake here wouldn't hold enough oxygen to keep him conscious.

  Immediately, Ryan's drone sense locked on the gryphons tracking his fall. Winged bots, gryphons were deployed as a standard safety measure at any breach in the ship's hull. They swooped out of the Mercy.

  Arching back, Laing also saw that two raptors were diving toward him in fast pursuit. He streamlined, hoping the gryphon would follow his plummet. The raptors fell with him. Wind whipped his face. His eyes teared to blindness.

  A raptor closed the gap between them, shifting to fire on him. Laing shot out an arm and canted over, sending himself into a side spin. It flipped him hard over, the raptor's dart zinging by.

  Then they hit cloud cover. The scene flash-shifted to white. Laing went for broke, pulling free of the dive and arching his body open just seconds before the raptors caught him. The move worked. The raptors shot past, unable to slow themselves. Their black forms flashed by.

  Ryan broke through cloud cover and—just as he got a real look at the ground—a gryphon caught up with him. It latched to his back, locking tight. Then its wings shot to full length and he went from falling to gliding.

  Laing spent the rest of the descent hacking the gryphon's locator tags to make sure Frank couldn't track him.

  —Sarah, I'm coming.

  She told him what he needed to know.

  45

  ISTANBUL, TURKEY

  The ancient city rose before Ryan. He tried to take notice, to stay synched with the action around him, but found himself falling deeper into Sarah's link.

  —It's beautiful.

  —I guess, Ryan replied.

  During his transit to Istanbul, Sarah's dialogue had scatter-splashed over the gamut of her life, splotches of memory hurled into the void. He had tried to keep her clear, to hold her to the memories that were important—to him at least. But she continued to slip, her mind faltering with each passing second.

  Istanbul crowded in on Ryan, the hard shock of culture shift amping his isolation. Madda was gone. The cold operator in Ryan hated that he couldn't push past Madda's death, and Frank's betrayal. But the events haunted him, a dark smudge on his perception.

  The raw-nerve edginess that ran through the city did nothing to settle Laing's turmoil. Fear burned through the coffee shops and markets, searing the normally energetic bustle of street life with dark foreboding. People were scared—the future in flux.

  Laing pushed it away, focusing on what was to come.

  The Hagia Sophia loomed before him. One more monument to a history of blood and battle. Four spires vaulted into the sky around the church's massive dome. The building had been maintained, which in it-self set it apart from the rest of Istanbul. The city had no discernible plan. Modern buildings smashed against the ancient. But most structures contained both new and old, supplies ripped as needed from wherever they could be found, picked from the flea market of past and present.

  The Hagia Sophia remained pristine. Mold- and pollution-eating microbes had been sprayed into the building's walls during restoration. Its dome descended to walls of soft pink.

  —I like the name. Sarah's words floated through the ether. The Church of the Holy Wisdom of God. Built and then burned in the fourth century. It was rebuilt and became the center of the Eastern Orthodox Church—the apex of Byzantine architecture.

  —Why are you telling me this?

  —I visited the Hagia Sophia as a ...I'm not sure when.

  Ryan felt the gut pull of her memory slip. Normally, he pushed Sarah's monologues into the background when he was on mission and she got chatty. Now, he coveted every word.

  —Go on.

  —It then became a mosque after the Ottoman conquest and Constan - tinople's fall. Inside the building there's a pillar with a hole in it. Mosques face Mecca, right? So, when Hagia Sophia became a mosque, it was slightly out of whack—off center. So the angel Gabriel comes down and pushes on the pillar, shifting the building into alignment.

  —His alignment.

  —I guess that would be a matter of perspective, Ryan.

  —I'm starting to feel for Gabriel. Always under the thumb of someone more powerful. No matter who's in charge, he winds up being the guy shov - ing buildings around, killing the wicked, announcing the end of the world.

  Laing had the sudden need to see the angel's imprint on that column. Were his own actions so different? He had realigned the world in destroying Echelon. Today, no matter what happened, he would force a similar shift.

  —You're no angel. That much I remember.

  Ryan laughed. His procrastination faltered with her words.

  —True enough.

  Ryan turned from the grand entrance and got under way. He followed the directions Sarah had given him, supplied to her by Krueger. Laing wasn't thrilled about walking into such an obvious trap, but with Sarah's memory on the table, he didn't have time for recon.

  He veered on a diagonal, heading for a towering scraper that lanced up into the steel-gray sky. Pushing through the street hawkers that swarmed Istanbul, Laing skirted the scraper's entrance. He cut down an alley between the scraper and a mishmash of neighboring buildings. The alley was a combination of modern biocrete and centuries-old cobblestone, a haphazard collection of past and present occupying the same space.

  The corridor ran tight, the scraper's bulk blocking all but a single shaft of light into which Ryan proceeded. While the scraper's mirrored black was unsettling, it was the jumble on the other side of the street that made Ryan nervous. The pock-work buildings offered prime positions for a sniper. He had no doubt eyes were on him. Darkness closed in as he walked deeper into the scraper's shadow.

  The sounds of the city faded. Here in the shadows, honest commerce could not thrive. This was a place for illicit trades—skin, amps and depressants, body mod. From doorways, quiet solicitations were whispered. Ryan pushed deeper.

  “Laing.” A grainy voice spilled from the black.

  Ryan turned and peered into a fissure cut between two ancient buildings. Even with the drones, he couldn't see into its back depths. The stink of rot filled his nostrils. He inched down the alley, hand to the rough stone wall for guidance. He felt the eons slip away. The flow of centuries did not reach into this crevasse.

  Darkness. The shuffling of his own feet. And the smell. Then, light pierced the black. It hit him dead in the face.

  “You have what he wants?” the voice croaked.

  “Let's get on with this.”

  A pause. Then the beam of light dropped and broadened. Laing could just make out a cloaked figure holding the torch. Below him, an ancient manhole cover had been pried loose. The figure motioned for Laing to approach.

  Ryan stepped close, peering down into the well and
seeing nothing. Confused, he looked up and into the figure's face. The image seared through him, forcing Ryan back a step. The face was all gore and bone. Cracked teeth rose to black gums, which Ryan could see clearly as there were no lips. One eye socket lay empty and bone white, the other held a dark eye. The nose had lost its cartilage. A living nightmare.

  “He's waiting for you,” the man said.

  Ryan held still, trying to curb a vicious revulsion. It went beyond rational, lodging in the place where childhood terrors reside. He managed another look into the man's face. This time, the man caught his reaction.

  “Weaponized leprosy,” he said.

  “Krueger did this to you?”

  The man laughed in sickly, wheezing heaves. “Keeps the tourists away.”

  Ryan could only nod. He pulled from the grisly image and tried to focus. Had to hold focus.

  —It's dark, Ryan.

  —Sarah, I'm close. You have to hold out.

  —Yeah. Hold out. Hold on. Just here—holding.

  Ryan pushed it away. Pushed her away. He stooped to the manhole, his feet finding the rungs of a ladder. A wave of fetid warmth hit him, drawing a gag. He swallowed the nausea and dropped in.

  The ghost handed him the torch and slid the manhole closed.

  Laing descended into a conduit corridor. Just big enough for him to stand upright, the tunnel ran fiber optics, quantum connections, and the general clutter of linkage that webbed a city together. Bioengineered bacteria kept the tunnel clean. A sewer pipe ran down centerline.

  Laing pulled schematics from the flow and visually overlaid them on reality. He found a line through the labyrinth under the city, veering from Krueger's instructions. Ryan hoped the deviation would allow him a few moments of surprise. He fell into the sim and moved forward at a quick, stooped jog.

  Five hundred meters, two lefts, one right and a ladder down, Laing stopped. The soft sim hovered over his visual draw. This was the spot. He knelt, pulling a circular device from the holster strapped to his leg.

  Nicknamed the Blazer, the XN-901 was a controlled incendiary device used to silently breach almost any barrier. He stuck it to the tunnel's floor. The Blazer latched firm, hooks setting to form a clean seal. Ryan could just hear the whir of combustion. The device used massive, targeted heat bursts to do its work. Ryan scuttled back.

  Shift, lock, and a muffled sizzle.

  The tunnel melted clean through in less than a second. As the incendiary seared through the tunnel wall, the Blazer exuded a ceramic weave behind it, killing the heat and stifling fire spread. Once it had punched though, Laing triggered the Blazer's reel. The device retracted up through the man-sized hole it had burned out. Ryan snapped it back into its holster.

  He bent over the opening and looked down into another world. Another time.

  Laing peered down into the gloom. Ancient columns rose from oil-black water. They pushed up to an arched ceiling, which Ryan had just punctured. He slipped through the hole, grabbing on to steel rods that inter-linked the columns for added support.

  He monkeyed along the bar and reached one of the columns. Its musty rock smell pervaded the space. Laing hugged it, orienting himself. Columns stretched out in both directions, melting into black. Even infrared offered him little in the way of sight. Darkness held thick.

  Ryan used the diagrams locked into the drones to guess at location. His fingers, wrapped over ridges at the column's peak, began to tire. He had to move. Body hugging the column, he slid down its gritty surface, trying not to upset the chamber's silence.

  He reached the column's square base and slipped into the black water. It stank of slow rot, ages of death festering under the glassy surface. Ryan pushed forward, ripples breaking the dead calm.

  —You there, Ryan?

  —I'm here. Krueger certainly has a sense for the dramatic.

  The space radiated history—a past so potent that it eclipsed the world above. Centuries of illicit meetings and intrigues must have gone down in this subterranean space. It was like entering the castle of a long-dead kingdom.

  —I am forgetting you.

  —I'm almost there.

  —No, you're slipping away. It's so odd, Ryan, watching pieces of myself degrade. My past is evaporating. I focus on a memory, then it vanishes like a magic trick. All I get is a gap and this heavy feeling, like I'm drowning. Funny, huh? Here I've been trying to forget for so long. Now I get my wish and it's crushing.

  —Tell me one.

  —One?

  —A memory. Tell me. I'll hold it for you.

  Ryan pushed through the waist-deep water. Around him, column on column rose into the black. Each was slightly different, as if cobbled together from a menagerie of buildings. Eras mashed together.

  —I remember a man.

  —If you're going to tell me about your long-lost love—

  —Shut up and listen.

  —Yeah, okay.

  —I remember that time we had in Tasmania—before I started hating you. Before you hated yourself.

  —Sarah.

  —Just fucking listen.

  Ryan held silent. He peered through the gloom. Krueger's instructions had him entering the cistern about one hundred meters ahead. Laing hoped his change of plan would shift his odds, but suspected Krueger had factored in Ryan's inability to take orders.

  —I liked having you inside me. Swaying up over the canopy, the slow sex. Your drones letting me feel what you felt, letting me be part of you for a little while. I remember that. The heat of it. Then, after you turned away, after you saw what had happened to the world, I craved that connection like an addict.

  I remember feeling so helpless under the force of that need. I hated my - self for it. I hated you for revealing it. So I left. I worked. Tried to fucking save the world—and look how that turned out. And that need for you, it wouldn't let me go. I . . .

  —Tell me, Sarah.

  —Fuck it—I'm dying, right?

  —You're not dying.

  Sarah pushed through.

  —I hated you, Ryan. Really. And still, the need. It was love. Even after all you did. All I did. The fucking love wouldn't let up. I thought, maybe if I be - came like you, I could be strong like you—get over you. Every time I went under the knife, I remember . . .

  —What do you remember?

  A long pause. Too long. Ryan felt Sarah hunting for the linkage in her mind—trying to hold her past together.

  —One more time. I remember thinking, one more time and I'll be . . .

  —What, Sarah?

  —I remember . . .

  Pushing through the darkness, Laing sensed movement. The slightest scratch. A flicker, impossibly fast, flashing over him. Sarah's narration came to a sputtering halt. A moment of quiet, so pure it cut through his pain.

  —Sarah?

  No reply.

  Ryan peered into the gloom. There was nothing to see. Nothing to hear. Yet he knew. In the dead silence, he felt the cold chill of a presence. He knew they were waiting for him.

  —Sarah?

  Still nothing. He didn't have time for this. Sarah needed him now. He abandoned quiet for a splashing lope that drove him forward. From his shirt pocket, Ryan pulled a pen gun flare. He held it high, ready to fire.

  Before he could pull the trigger, stiff pain shot through his hand. The flare dropped from his grip, splashing into the water.

  “No need, Mr. Laing.” Krueger's voice filled the black.

  Light.

  Adjusting, Ryan found that he was the center of attention, and staring down the barrel of Zachary Taylor's gun.

  46

  BASILICA CISTERN, ISTANBUL, TURKEY

  Ryan's eyes adjusted to the light. He leaned into the column at his side, trying to find balance under the perception shift. Krueger stood above him on a platform jutting into the water. Behind the platform, a fast-form prefab had been erected. The blocky carbon structure ran up the cistern's wall, hard-contrasting with the antiquity surrounding it.

&nb
sp; Clinging with grip gloves to the column, Zachary Taylor hung over Ryan, gun trained for another shot. Around Taylor, stationed throughout the cistern, a phalanx of mercs stood waiting, each of them gazing down with the same fish-eyed indifference.

  For a moment Ryan was distracted from the threat by the massive face cut into the base of the column next to him: the gnarled relief of a woman upside down, snakes slithering from her head and down into the black water.

  “Medusa,” Krueger said. “These cisterns were built out of the detritus of the civilizations that came before. The gods of the past, drowned in the name of progress.”

  Ryan shook his hand, his fingers tingling from Taylor's shot. Before him, Alfred Krueger stood triumphant, his eyes like cold steel.

  “It's funny, Mr. Laing. How places such as this—with so much history—are built, then forgotten, rediscovered, resurrected, then lost again.”

  “Not really my style,” Ryan said.

  Krueger laughed. “It's sixth century. Built under Justinian at the height of the Byzantine Empire, it can hold some eighty thousand cubic meters of water. Probably an enlargement of a cistern built by Constantine himself. Building material was pulled from ancient pagan sites.” Krueger's words echoed through the cistern, the acoustics building his tone to a rich, reverberating drum.

  “Istanbul pushes on over our heads, but I like it here,” Krueger continued. “Here, the past rules. Here, I never forget what was taken from me. You have what I need?” he asked.

  Ryan lifted from his crouch.

  “Where is she?”

  Krueger pulled Sarah from the prefab's shadow. The spike clung ugly to her face. Ryan held her gaze, but saw no recognition. Her good eye held him in green reflection. Nothing more.

  “It will be okay, Sarah,” Laing whispered.

  She nodded dully.

  “I want my past back,” Krueger demanded. “I want what was taken.”