Last Mayor (Book 9): The Light

by Grist, Michael John

  The depths of Olan Harrison's cruelty rang out around her in a way she'd never considered before. To call him a monster wasn't enough. He wasn't human anymore but something else, some grotesque incarnation caught in between human and the place beyond, half torn to bits by what he'd done. What kind of victory would ever satisfy the savaged depths of his broken soul?

  James While couldn't talk. His body didn't have that capacity, because suffering was what mattered to Olan Harrison. James While had defied him for over a decade, and for that he would suffer forever; a bag in a cell with a person trapped inside, unable to ever escape the crushing dislocation.

  One taste of that was enough to make Rachel decide. She opened the cell door without thinking, leaving her trail all over it. She held his strange hands, and cupped his new chin, and nodded as tears welled down his cheeks. Finally, finally. She did it as gently, as tenderly as she could, with his head pressed against her breast, whispering soothing words, just as she would to a terrified child.

  The knife worked a forgiving path up his arm, slitting arteries and spilling him out onto the cell floor. He looked into her eyes, and as the life drained slowly from him, not painful enough to leave a retrievable spike on the line, his gratitude almost broke her.

  "I'm sorry," she whispered.

  In his eyes lay the promise of atonement. Of course, the promise was no longer enough. It would never be enough. She'd enabled Olan Harrison in everything, and now she saw that it would never end. Nothing could fill the bottomless void inside him.

  She kissed James While's forehead as it chilled. The light was gone from his eyes.

  She sealed the cell door buoyed by this new drive. On the ride back up from the 'missile bay' she watched Amo's battle with Olan, and understood what her regret had been, and what his defiance really meant.

  It meant there was a choice.

  Sometimes your life was all you had to give. She'd always had that choice, but she'd never had the bravery to take it. Maybe now she would.

  * * *

  When Olan flashed into existence in the upper reach of the Redoubt, she was waiting.

  The fury and the fascination bulged off him in equal measure. He saw her at the door and grunted, slumping at his desk with one hand clamped to his bloody neck.

  'Missile bay', she thought, concealing what she'd done as best she could. 'Launching missiles'.

  She didn't rush to help him. He wouldn't welcome any acknowledgement that he'd been hurt. She knew him well, now, both the man that he'd been and the creature that he'd become.

  "We need to make an example of him," she said.

  Olan looked at her, danger flashing in his eyes. To even speak to him like this, to see him like this, was risking her life. She felt his influence hovering over her severed thread like a thumb and forefinger, ready to pinch her out. The box would be waiting. Perhaps that would give him some relief, for a time.

  Unless she could offer him something better.

  "Of them all," she went on, speaking in a dead tone while allowing her real rage to show through. He wouldn't understand the source unless he probed her. Hopefully he wouldn't see the truth for many hours, long enough for her to reach her destination, transmit her message, and bring the real war back here. "We need to bury them so deep that they'll never dare raise their heads out of the shit again."

  The pain rising off him was palpable. She'd never seen him this fragile, not since the moment they'd birthed him after the first Lazarus operation. The intensity of those few minutes before he sent them all away had been agonizing, and those who hadn't fled fast enough ended up comatose on the floor, flattened on the line beneath his suffering.

  Only days later had he emerged, with rough bandages of control patched over the jagged pieces of his broken self. She should have seen it then; those pieces would never fit again. They could only be made to fit, and the force required would not only break him further, but would break every piece in the jigsaw. Every soul living and dead would have to crack to make room.

  She saw it now.

  But there wasn't only pain steaming off him, there was also fascination. His eyes shone like a child's, as if the pain was nothing to him.

  "Would you follow a man like that, Rachel?" he asked her.

  She was lucky he was distracted, not really listening, or he would have felt the yearning shoot up inside her. Her discipline was flagging. He looked over at her, white eyes sparkling now with flecks of dirty red. "Well?"

  "To battle, yes," she said, measuring every word. There was always a balance with Olan. Too much adoration would repel him. Too much challenge would enrage him. There was a brittle line of honesty somewhere in the middle. "To the ends of the Earth, perhaps. But not beyond."

  Olan snorted. He liked that. "He tricked me. He planned it well. He stood up beneath the wall."

  She had seen it. Watching a man stand under the massive weight of that pressure was unbelievable. Not a million type ones and twos in the heyday of their assault had managed to drive that deep and survive.

  "I saw him. I warned you. You underestimated him."

  Olan's eyes flared. There, that was the line. But keeping him angry was important, so he couldn't see through the fog of his own emotions to her. She'd always done this, needling him to a point, until he signaled her to stop. He'd always respected strength, as long as it reflected back his own strength to him.

  "Watch yourself, Heron." His thumb and forefinger pinched tight on her thread. She felt him squeezing, looking for an excuse. "Don't think this is your chance to flee."

  She stared at him defiantly, and took a step forward. To back down was to lose. To push too hard was to lose. She had to walk the line.

  "Name the ways I've failed you, Olan. List the times my resolve has flagged."

  He stared. His pinch didn't relent.

  "Force is all that matters now," she pressed on, and pointed out of the glass over the jagged mountains. "And that man has force. You underestimated him, though I know you won't make the same mistake again. It's no weakness to acknowledge a mistake. You went out there as arrogant as him. It's luck he didn't die, and luck you didn't. What do you think would become of us, were you to fall? Have I not the right to be angry? These are my people too." She spread her arms. "We've all seen the Last Mayor's mercy. We've seen him destroy the SEAL indiscriminately, and torture his own people to no avail. I don't dare imagine what he would do to us, if your protection were to fail."

  Olan Harrison stiffened at this. Perhaps her speech stirred an iota of pride in his dried-up old breast. It was a pleasant fiction, perhaps, for him to believe, that he 'protected' them. It was one of the messages he'd once filled their heads with, back when he'd crooned stories of mercy and liberty and a great world to come, even as he'd severed their threads. He'd told them elaborate stories of the greater utility of human cooperation, beneath the mantle of one controlling figurehead. At times he'd lectured them on the many failings of democracy, and outlined the inexorable fall of America into civil war. He'd often railed about how his genocide had averted a global war that the world would never have recovered from.

  In such ways he'd framed himself as their savior, and many in the Redoubt had come to believe that story with all their hearts, were willing to die for it. Rachel Heron had tried hard to believe it too, because that would have made the things they'd done acceptable, even right. Yet she'd never really felt it. Instead she'd grown expert at mimicking belief.

  Parroting a little of that belief back at him now was easy.

  The slit in his neck throbbed blood, darkening his white shirt. He no longer looked so clean and pure, a white knight come to save them all. Now he was a brawler dirty from the trenches, and it made him more dangerous than ever. Clothing him once more in his old righteousness was a survival mechanism not only for her, but for them all.

  He stood. Given his hulking frame of a generation one Lazarus, closer to the 'demons' than the humans of old, he towered over her.

  "You're right
, Rachel. I was arrogant, just like the Mayor."

  She gave a slight nod. That was enough, to push him over and eliminate any doubt. She'd been working such slight manipulations for as long as she could remember, leveraging his pride and the respect he held her in to lessen the weight of his overbearing hand, though never before had she worked her influence so brazenly.

  Before she'd commuted sentences, earning clemency for minor crimes and brief reprieves for her fellow inmates. Now there was no time to tiptoe around, not when his rage made him primed and ready.

  "Send me," she said, thrusting her chest out. "I'm ready. You've trained me well. I see the lessons you've learned, and I'll carry them forth."

  He inclined his head. It was pure temerity for her to suggest tactics. The path forward had been laid out years in advance. His plan. But his plan had just failed, and it was into that gap she needed to steer. That was why forcing him to accept his mistake was so necessary. Enforce a little trust. Cash in on a decade of unremitting service.

  "Send you," he said slowly.

  "I can travel where you can't. I can lead our forces to victory and return with firepower to level this jester Mayor." She forced extra sarcasm into repeating Amo's title. Perhaps too much, and he caught it.

  "So you'd let hate rule you, Rachel? A moment ago you said you would follow him to the end of the Earth."

  She laughed. There was nothing else for it, not without backpedaling madly, and she couldn't afford the scrutiny that would bring. He'd see James While bleeding out in her mind, and all that would remain would be the box.

  "But not beyond, I said," she answered firmly. "He hasn't died and returned. What does he know about the weight of the future? He's a vicious and charismatic leader of men, I acknowledge it, but we are not men here. We are angels."

  Olan Harrison smiled. That had been one of his greatest rhetorical flourishes, once upon a time. Rachel had always smiled while he'd made his pronouncements. Probably he'd felt her judgment, had known that she didn't really believe, but he'd always needed her expertise, and had tolerated her as long as she'd kowtowed.

  "Angels," he repeated, tasting the word. "You never liked the term."

  "What other term suffices, when he rallies outside our borders with an army of beasts plucked from the depths of hell? What else can we be, but protectors of what is good? I will lead our forces to victory, I swear that to you. Everything I love is here, and I will protect it to my last breath."

  His smile spread. Yes. She felt him taking the bait, even if he took it in his own way. Like Amo, she'd laid another trap out of things that were real, and Olan didn't stop to doubt himself any more than before.

  "You love us so well, Rachel. Perhaps you also love your dream of controlling a continent? You seek North America, I expect. Your ambition runs unchecked."

  There was no point pointing out that he'd promised her North America a very long time ago. He knew it was her vaulting ambition. She understood now, more than ever, that he never intended to give it to her. Not in any meaningful way. He couldn't stand to cede power to anyone.

  "I've made no secret of it," she pressed. "I never have. I seek to earn my place in the firmament of angels, at your right hand. All I ask is a chance to prove myself."

  It was all a salve to his ego. After the defeat he was ready to lash out blindly. Now he was regaining control, thanks to her. The mask of command was coming back, and that kept him on a leash for a little while. She didn't dare think about the apocalyptic violence he would rain down if he thought all was lost.

  "Be sure not to rise above your station. Remember who rules." He tweaked her thread, pulling control of her body away for a moment, and she stiffened. For seconds he prevented her from breathing. It was a game, one of many.

  He returned control, and she gasped for breath. Dizzy silver spots danced before her eyes, but she managed to keep her feet. He wouldn't like it if she fell.

  "I remember who set me free," she said, looking into his stinging white eyes. "I remember who made me what I am. How could I forget my Lord and master?"

  He waved a hand, tiring of the flattery. The decision was made.

  "Go, then. Take the battalion of your choice. I want the girl crushed and prepared for Lazarus protocol. Once she falls, the SEAL will crumble. The Last Mayor will be unable to resist. I entrust this to you."

  Rachel gave a sharp nod. There. It was done.

  "I swear, the girl Anna will die today."

  14. APIA

  Anna jumped and dreamed and stood up shields. She left lepers behind her like cairns stitched across the world, snatching glimpses of a hundred different realities that all somehow existed at once.

  She saw deserts where whistling sand zephyrs spun about the fragmented ruins of ancient civilizations; columns stood in rows, the giant face of a woman emerging from a hill of sand.

  She saw a gray-flanked wolf pack stalking an elk through hoar frosted tundra, cornering their prey in the dead-end between two sunken cars and a highway support column. Their teeth closed and blood flashed, and then -

  - ice climbed up a dark cliff-face like translucent vines, perfect and crystalline and so pure that -

  - wide, shimmering waters peaked and troughed around her, perched atop a greened spit of rock like a mossy emerald in the midst of an ocean, until-

  - a rolling valley opened up ahead, of such breathtaking beauty that her heart pumped like a steam train and -

  - voices swam in the lengthening black static between jumps, becoming a place unto themselves, filled with hurtful old images that only grew louder and more raucous.

  "Honey, I can't read you any more Alice tonight."

  The old words echoed with the ringing clash of old shame lurking in the darkness and the final sighs of people dying, and Ravi bleeding in the corn and Amo shambling near. She heard the Jabberwock flapping near, while somewhere on an island her father stood and roared into the skies.

  One by one the bunkers came back to life.

  First of those was Istanbul. They sent for Lucas but she didn't wait; had nothing to say. She left within minutes of forming the shield, jumping across thousands of miles with her hundred-league boots. In Zarafshan, Uzbekistan, they stared at her like she was a messenger from on high, atop a dusty gray steppe.

  "Go," she told them. "Before more bombs fall. Talk to Istanbul. I can't stay."

  They stared until she flashed out of existence and away.

  In Lucknow, India, there were monkeys hanging from low boughs in the trees around the bunker entrance, watching as she brought the people buried below back to life. In Nagqu, Tibet there was a strange red sun in the sky, more fascinating to her than the cries of the people as they woke. In Naypyitaw, Myanmar, there was a heavy, hot rain that sizzled off the burning metal bunker arch. In Xi An, China, a voice in her head sang a song she couldn't shake, a jingle from an old television show about Reading Rainbows. In Surabaya, Indonesia, the bunker was embedded in a dormant volcano at the head of a cloud-shrouded mountain range, and the people didn't speak any English at all, so she left them a radio and a frequency to dial and jumped away. In Carpentaria, Australia, she vomited blood, and at the twelfth bunker after her longest jump yet over the Pacific, in the tiny, balmy town of Apia in American Samoa, she barely even spoke to the people before jumping out of their new shield's radius to collapse on a red-tiled roof looking out over the sea.

  Her head was an inferno, too hot now to cool.

  Perhaps three days had passed. She couldn't tell and could barely think for the agony. So many jumps had left her transformed; fundamentally twisted on the line. She rolled numbly down from the roof, dropping the last stretch onto her shoulder with a crunch. Over a railing she went, staggered down a baking yellow beach and poured herself into the water.

  It gathered her in. The ocean. She laid her head down in the tide and sank. Water pooled over her face and the cool of it was delightful. Breathing didn't matter down here. She didn't care about her body anymore, not after so m
any jolts on the line. What was even left of her body, now? It felt like an anchor, and anchors were made to sink, so she sank. Soon her lungs began to convulse. The cool was all that mattered.

  She didn't want to see Ravi anymore, riddled with bullets in the corn. She didn't want to see him on the bed beside her, his eyes not his own and staring back at her.

  Where was he now?

  Her chest bucked in the water. He'd been with her before, so close behind a thin kind of shadow veil, but that was such a long time ago, nine bunkers earlier, and she wanted to see him as he was supposed to be; a happy friend, a lover, a husband-to-be.

  The names of all the SEAL installations burned like brands in her mind. She'd made the list years earlier with Lucas' help, with Amo's blessing, then she'd set out to destroy them all. She'd been so righteous. Their dead were going to heap up around her, thousands upon thousands, and now she'd saved them all.

  How odd that was. She'd offered them no treaty, made no pre-conditions laid down for their survival, had only gifted their lives back to them, and for what?

  She felt the world changing out there. Her lungs took their first sip of water, salty and burning down her throat, but deliciously cool compared to the heat in her head. She didn't want to see Amo anymore, not like he'd been in Istanbul, standing over her with his shoulder hideously broken and that pawing madness in his eyes. She couldn't bear it, not from him; she needed to erase it along with the rest.

  Another little sip sent galaxies of silver spinning through the darkness. It felt much better, and wasn't it better to save rather than murder? She thought back to the days when she'd first circled the world, and what had she been dreaming of, then? Saving people. Saving herself. Finding her father.

  He cried out from his island in her head. Lint and cobbles, he shouted, but he was old now, and his words no longer made sense. Old and forgotten. There were others she owed more to, faces she liked to think of even less.