The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  So these people would be worked. Lara saw their civilization spreading out into the future, marked with the red bridle steering them down a bloody path. So Witzgenstein would reshape them until she found the perfect form to serve her bitter, damaged heart, and then lock that system into stone; turn it into a religion, make it a matter of faith, and punish all who would not obey.

  She and Amo had always tried to appeal to something higher; to build something better, calling on the parts of their people that aspired to make a world in line with the highest ideals of the United States, with liberty and justice for all. Not an authoritarian dystopia, not a dogmatic religious state.

  Pretty thoughts.

  Witzgenstein said.

  They will go unsung.

  Then her own voice rang out abruptly, as Witzgenstein pulled her strings from within.

  "My name is Lara of the New USA, and I make this confession of my free will."

  The crowd hustled closer to hear. They craned and shoved each other to see her beautiful, sacred face.

  "Stop this, Lara," Witzgenstein called, "I beg you."

  But Lara did not stop. She went on, launching into a long recitation of all the usual lies: the murders Amo had committed that she had covered up, the way they had manipulated every person in New LA to follow their satanic bidding, their long-plotted destruction of Janine Witgzenstein's good name and subsequent exile, leaving their people unprotected and exposed to the dark excesses of Amo's dreams, how that in turn had led to the destruction of New LA, as punishment from a righteous God above.

  Witzgenstein began to weep. It was a captivating performance, scored with the soundtrack of Lara's confessions.

  She confessed to numerous sexual deviancies; the same ones Witzgenstein had confessed to her. She spoke of her unnatural desires and witchcraft; her unseemly skills, the ways she had poured poison into people through her coffee shop 'brews', her mind-control that posed as displays of caring. It was laughable, but the people weren't laughing. Their eyes bugged. Their jaws tightened. Where before some had been uncertain, they now worked themselves into fountains of outrage.

  They were ready, like a tinder keg, for the spark.

  And the spark came.

  It wasn't just one torch, but all of them. The first was thrown from somewhere at Lara's back and others followed; dozens, perhaps half of everyone present, driven to become part of this cornerstone of the new world.

  The gasoline caught all around her with a flood of gusting whuffs, sending orange flames flickering up through the lower reaches of the pyre. The heat was instant and ferocious, forcing a slick of sweat up through her skin that made the gown cling to her body. Yells came from below, insults, calls for shame. In seconds she felt herself wilting against the stake, her legs becoming greasy and thin.

  Bitter smoke poured up to engulf her, the fire raced upward, and she stood there in the midst, waiting for the worst to come. The true pain wasn't there yet but could only be seconds away.

  Hold your breath

  Came Witzgenstein's voice, and Lara felt her lungs suck in a breath.

  I can't have you dying from smoke inhalation. We need the screams to be real, Lara.

  She already would have collapsed, if not for Witzgenstein holding her up. Her legs bowed and her shoulders sank but Witzgenstein held her up. Already she couldn't think for the heat, pressing down like the demon's fist. Sweat streamed into her eyes and thickened with the smoke, mercifully obscuring this new world of ogling faces. Bright red flames leapt around her like teeth, like jaws closing in, and throughout only one detail from the South Lawn remained clear; Janine Witzgenstein's eyes, as hungry as the fire, sucking this moment down.

  Thank you for this.

  She said.

  Thank you for all you've done, Lara. Now let the people see God's forgiving love.

  The red bridle slipped a little, and finally the scream building in Lara's chest was released.

  She screamed, then smoke rushed into her lungs, and she screamed again. She felt the people recoil, then lean in, pumping like a bellows, raising the flames higher and faster until they were everything, a suffocating soup that broiled her body inside and out. Her arms fell limp by her sides, no longer able to clutch the stake, and she wavered, held up only by Witzgenstein's will.

  She drifted and screamed, as figures whirled in the flames and smoke; Anna in the mountains surrounded by monsters, Amo in a room with a dead man and a great black eye, but these were quickly swallowed by the flames.

  No one's coming to help you, child. This is the end.

  The first lick of fire touched her foot, and any remaining sense was driven from her mind. She screamed. The fires bit higher and at last the bridle pulled away, leaving her alone atop the pyre, with nothing to reach for and no one to help, and begging for someone to come.

  But nobody came, because there was nobody left.

  Then somebody did.

  Something shifted beneath her on the line, surging hard in a burst of electric purple that charged straight up to her, battering a clear path through the bridle and ramming head first into Lara's body.

  Come, little sister.

  Said a voice she recognized, then she was flying up and out through shifting gray images in the smoke, lofting a second in the air before falling and hitting hard at the edge of the pyre, snapping blazing branches and rolling away over the grass.

  The crowd exhaled. The fire burned on. The purple blaze died and Lara coughed.

  She was on fire still, still burning. She rolled and thrashed at her body, at her hair, putting out the flames even as she struggled for breath, there on the close-cropped grass, in full sight of all. The pain was all over her, sinking down through the layers of her skin into lasting, permanent damage, but there was no time for that now, there was only time for-

  She lifted her head, and the crowd lurched back. She could barely see them for sweat and smoke, but their faces didn't matter now, her exhaustion didn't matter, what mattered was the line and she saw that as clearly as she felt the fire's touch. Around them the bridle was broken, torn by the purple blaze, chopping away their lust at the head, now replaced by a surging fear.

  Of her.

  In their eyes she was the devil; flung from the depths of the fire, blazing but somehow alive, naked and burnt black and utterly unforgiving. She couldn't stand; every fiber of her body wanted to lie down, to pant, to vomit, to shudder and weep, but she forced herself onto her knees. Swaying, she searched their blurred faces for the only one that mattered.

  Witzgenstein.

  Her eyes marked her out. Staring, white, so perfect, like alarm bells in the night. She couldn't believe what was happening, didn't understand it and felt the same fear as the rest, too stunned to re-build the bridle.

  Lara drew on that fear, sucking it down just as Witzgenstein had sucked the strength out of her, and used it as a crutch to stand. The burnt gown slipped away, leaving her raw and naked before them. The crowd broke at once, crying out in fear. Some staggered back, falling over each other in their panic, while others turned and fled. She was an apparition. She was a demon.

  She reached out on the line and stopped them in their tracks. There could be no escape from this. This had to happen now, and they would get what they wanted.

  At last Witzgenstein reached out with the bridle, seeking to snap it back into place over her people, but Lara was already there. The fingers of her mind wove a net out of pain, fear and horror, and laid it over them all. The stitching was tight and seamless, growing more perfect with every passing second. Witzgenstein lashed out with hammer blows but the net absorbed them, flexing easily and bending back into shape.

  Witzgenstein's eyes flashed in disbelief and she redoubled her assault, but Lara just redoubled her weaving of the net, sewing the bridle directly into it, so her strength pulled not only from the crowd but from Witzgenstein herself.

  Cynthia gave everything she had to it. Frances and Alan and George drove it onward. So Lara's legs be
came firm beneath her, her gaze cleared and the pain numbed, and she turned with the fire at her back, pointing at each person as they were forced into the net.

  Witzgenstein screamed out her frustration, thrashing against the links growing round her in the net, but Lara just used those screams to wrap her up tighter, spinning silk like a spider around a fly, until the crowd was silent, and the line was still, and the only noise came from the roaring fire.

  Lara stood alone, surveying these people. The words came without thinking.

  On your knees.

  They knelt. Only Witzgenstein remained standing, her face torn with rage and frustration. With one touch on the line, Lara smoothed that expression out. Then she reached into Witzgenstein's mind, into her body, and started her walking forward.

  A slow, stately pace.

  Janine screamed defiance inside her own head, but Lara didn't let a speck of it show. Those who tried to turn their faces away, she forced to look. The men, the women, the children.

  Please, have mercy.

  Witzgenstein called inside, but Lara stitched those words into the net and made them part of her strength.

  The first step into the fire was a raw pain that almost dropped Lara where she stood, but she held on. Witzgenstein howled inside, but outwardly was as silent as a saint. Let this be part of the story, a cornerstone for them all.

  A second step.

  She climbed, and Lara was with her every step.

  How?

  Witzgenstein howled silently, driving that one thought through the agony as the fires burned her alive.

  How, Lara, how?

  She reached the top and stood like a candle, lighting their way forward. Lara felt every second of it, in the thick of the raging flames as Witzgenstein's perfect skin crisped and her beautiful blonde hair blazed, consumed by the pain. When she could take it no more, she pulled away, and Witzgenstein collapsed.

  Lara did not.

  She stood in the midst of her people, naked, unashamed, looking round at their horrified faces. Tears lay on their cheeks. This was not what they'd wanted. This was not the release they'd hoped for.

  She circled the pyre, taking long strides and looking into their eyes, hammering this lesson in. She could light the fire too. She could stand above and wield the lash. She could take their fear as well as their love and use it as a bridle to whip them forever.

  She stopped before Frances.

  The woman was shuddering. She knelt in a muddy patch of her own piss. Lara lifted her chin, forcing their eyes to meet. The question came naturally, as she thought back on the purple flash on the line that had saved her life.

  "Where is Crow?"

  Frances stammered. She couldn't get the words out, so Lara helped her, reaching in and soothing the fear for a moment.

  "G-Gone," Frances answered, babbling despite Lara's calming touch, too deep in her terror. "Already g-gone."

  Lara let her chin drop, feeling something change. She reached out on the line, looking for Crow, but he wasn't there, or only the tiniest spark could be found, as if he was very far away.

  But he wasn't very far away. Lara saw it now, and felt it. She turned back to the fire. The heat was blistering. The stake at the top was barely visible through the maelstrom. Witzgenstein was gone, melted down into the wood.

  And Crow was there with her.

  "You burned him," she said softly.

  Frances choked on her own tongue. The truth was right there on the top of her mind, but she couldn't get it out.

  They'd put him in the middle of the pyre. Two for one, gagged and bound, reducing the minority load.

  They'd lynched him.

  She turned back to Frances. Her face was livid and blotchy with fear. She tried to beg.

  "Put your face in the mud," Lara said. And Frances did.

  "Deeper," Lara said, and so Frances did. So deep that she couldn't breathe.

  Lara waited. Frances' legs twitched, then went still. It didn't take long.

  After that, Lara gazed into the flames for a long time. Perhaps she'd heard him, now, she thought. As she was screaming, he'd been screaming too. Below her, already halfway there. In the race to die, he'd won, and then-

  She had no answer for what came next.

  He'd broken the bridle. The purple flash of him had come like a lightning strike, hurling her out. She couldn't argue with the truth. Crow was dead. Crow had saved her. Now Crow was gone.

  She gazed into the pyre until it stung her eyes and the heat scalded her face, until she saw Witzgenstein's bright white eyes in the flames, and heard again Witzgenstein's dying plea in the crackle and roar of the fire.

  How, Lara? How?

  18. CLICK

  I click and click and click until my eyes go dry and my head twinges and there's a deep, throbbing crick in my spine, then I click some more.

  James While lays out everything.

  I finally see the shape of the SEAL, this many-headed hydra that for so long has controlled my life. I understand what the Multicameral Array was for, and the Logchain, and even the Apotheo Net, but I come away from it all with the one most important question remaining, the same question James While searched for in vain.

  Who did this?

  I leaf through pictures of Olan Harrison's spread-eagled corpse in his Alps research lab, the moment the trail was lost, and try to pick it up again, but the trail is cold. The images are gory, hate-filled, worse than anything I've seen before. I've seen death before, but not like this. Salle Coram died swiftly in a spray of blood. Dr. Ozark was eaten by a demon. I shot Masako and left her crawling over the ice for the demons to reach. In Julio's pit they suffered horrors, but none so abhorrent.

  Who hated Olan Harrison this much?

  I click on.

  James While's filing system is beautifully clear, once I've started following along. It displays a bright and highly structured mind, but clarity doesn't help with the unknown. It is a flashlight shone into an impenetrable darkness. In the master timeline of his investigation, with many of the more important documents in the whole file hyperlinked in, I track his lack of progress after the Alps, up to the apocalypse and beyond.

  There is no sign of Olan's killers again, the shadow SEAL, not anywhere in the records, not anywhere in the world.

  Days and nights go by as I search. I hunt down threads that lead to nothing. James While has already done it all. I'm left with nothing, again and again.

  I lean back and my spine grates loudly. It's light outside today, maybe three days since I started and cold with the fire died down, but I've long forgotten about the dead chill in my toes and fingers. Now's the time to stand up and stamp some life into my extremities.

  I pace like James While. There are videos of him in the Oval Office, in the UN, with various world leaders where he went under cover in the last days, to ask and to command. The President shook his hand. The EU President shook his hand. James While was a broad-shouldered but wiry man with a hidden energy beneath the surface, like a quietly burning fuse. Just watching him I can feel the spark inching ever closer to explosion.

  Where now, I want to ask him? Where do I go now?

  I pace and think of him in the videos, a young man in his prime, with short dark hair like me. He is taller but thinner, perhaps better looking, and no doubt he is smarter, though his mannerisms and the way he walks make it clear he is on the Autistic spectrum. I know little about that, but in the way he staggers his pacing, so he always lands carefully on his right foot at this point in a circuit, his left foot at this point, or the way he turns at a precise ninety degrees at corners, I see the unusual workings of his mind.

  It is plain enough that he is a genius.

  I pace and let my mind spin, randomly revisiting standout pieces of While's records. My name is mentioned many times, as are my people. His Bordeaux facility tracked me through the Event, even in the moment that my readings spiked in a restaurant in New York with Lara, and the hours after when the final stage of their apocalyp
se came about.

  I think about him out there in the world, trying to bring order and justice while I was out there alone; both of us building, surviving, trying to make something for the future. But we were building different things. As I pace, I see that while I was building for a new world, for coming generations I would never even know, he was building for just one person, one successor, to come and continue his work.

  For me.

  His cairns mirror my own. His path through our world's twisted history touches on mine constantly. He watched me, it seems. It feels like every step of the way he was preparing for me, waiting for me, and now he's out there somewhere, just waiting for me to put the final piece into the puzzle.

  And there is something there. I feel something fluttering in the back of my mind, but I can't put words to it. It's a feeling only, slipping in and out of my sight like a butterfly I dare not trap, for fear of forever smudging its wings. I have to wait for it to come to me.

  In the meantime, I prepare to go.

  The trail is here. He has left it for me to find. Perhaps at the end, when I look into his eyes and know the man behind the mission, the butterfly will become clear. The missing piece will appear, and I'll know the real way forward. I'll know who it is I'm supposed to kill.

  I move faster once the intention is there, gathering what few things I need. I prepare a vehicle, and food, and fuel. The fuel is shit, thick and foul, but it will take me far enough to a place where I can collect another vehicle, then another, leapfrogging across Russia until I find this man who survived the apocalypse alongside me, like a distant unknown twin.

  Maybe then I'll know why billions had to die. I'll know why thousands had to die at my own hands. I'll finally know the truth, and I need to know. I need something to explain this pain, I need to make sense of it, or I'll never be myself again.

  I set out into the howling winds of a Siberian storm, but it is nothing. I don't feel the cold. With every mile I'm closer, so close I can taste it. Not redemption, or salvation, but revelation.

  My stolen truck's tires bite the ice and propel me into the blizzard.