Evolution (The Divine Series Book 5)

by M. R. Forbes

  I was in.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  The inner sanctuary was quiet, the three layers of guards on the outside expected to keep anyone from getting as far as I had. I crouched at the top of the building and surveyed the grounds. I was standing on part of a long, rectangular building that boxed in the rest of the space, the rooftop running out of sight towards the front. Beyond it was a second building that was wider and shorter, and a few more that were positioned to create the symmetry that Elyse had mentioned.

  The Heavenly Light was in the center.

  I didn't need to see it to know it. The building there was three stories high and had a sharp gold roof that spilled downward as though it had been made from the falling light of Heaven itself. It was painted white, with blocks of prayer layered into it in gold paint.

  There was a balcony that ran around the third floor of the pagoda, where columns rose at intervals to help support the roof.

  An angel was standing on it, looking east.

  She was beautiful. Magnificent. Her hair was red and gold and brown, falling in waves down her back. Her face was soft and angled, her neck long and pale. She was wearing a gown of gossamer white and gold that shimmered in the light and framed her from behind, revealing the most perfect body I had ever laid eyes on, and at the same time somehow keeping the most private parts always hinted at but never displayed. She was love and peace, strength and courage, beauty and art form all at once. The sight of her brought a sudden jolt to my soul, lifting it to immediate elation, and dropping it as fast. I felt the cold calm of her, her Heavenly power just as Rose had described.

  Blinding.

  She was unaware that I was crouched a hundred feet away and staring, trying to regain control of my emotions after setting eyes on something so amazing. I had to remind myself over and over that right now, she was the enemy.

  I rolled off the rooftop and down into the sanctuary, landing back on the ground without a sound. I needed to find Rose and Gervais, and hopefully Matthias. I needed to do it without her seeing me.

  There was no easy way to search for them. There was no trick I could use to discover where they were being held. Instead, I moved from shadow to shadow, building to building, pushing open screen doors on wooden tracks and looking in, scanning rooms and moving on, constantly aware that I could be discovered at any moment.

  I found the kitchen, where I was lucky enough to avoid the eyes of the Touched monks who were preparing the next days' meals.

  I found the barracks, where more monks slept on simple cots in small rooms separated only by rice paper partitions.

  I found the barn and the livestock, the communal baths, and even an old-fashioned loom.

  I didn't find Rose and Gervais.

  My search led me around the center building, to the front side where a black painted trailer was parked, an odd contrast to the old stone and wood of the ancient seraphim waypoint. The THI logo adorned each side of the trailer, and the back doors were hanging open. The inside was empty.

  A rut ran out from behind the trailer, the ground impacted by the many feet that moved the armors away from the truck and inside the base of the pagoda. I followed it to a large door, the outside of which was decorated with a carved depiction of the face of Jesus, head down, forehead bloodied by the crown of thorns resting on it. It was easy to tell that the columns at the base had been recently replaced, both by the lighter tone of the fresher wood, and by the volume and size of the scripture that covered them. The lettering glowed so faintly it was barely noticeable. It was active, the power in use. If I had to guess, it was to keep the archangel hidden.

  I watched it intently as I crossed the threshold, waiting to see if any more of the scripture began to glow, or if the intensity changed with my passage. It didn't appear to be a tripwire, at least not one that could pick me up. I put my hand on Jesus' face and pushed gently on the door, watching it shift inward without a sound, leaving just enough room to slip through.

  I entered the sanctuary, finding myself in a square room lit by a few LED lamps that had been placed along the floor and powered by a small generator that was sitting in the corner. Like the rest of the compound, the space inside was a square ring that ran the perimeter of the building, leaving the center open all the way up to the roof, surrounded by a series of metal columns emblazoned with scripture. In the middle of the open space, bathed in soft white light, was a simple stone altar, weathered and worn. Water pooled at its top and ran over the sides in a gentle trickle, landing in an array of white and gold flowers growing around the base.

  The inner sanctuary. I was expecting it to be hidden away behind massive doors, the way it had been in New York. I was expecting it to be more protected. Was this place so unknown to the demons that it wasn't needed? Or was I just not able to trigger any of the defenses?

  Someone was humming to my left.

  I turned my head, tracing the wall.

  First, I found the new Fists, connected to a steel and stone contraption that allowed them to hang lifeless from a pair of hooks, similar to what I had seen in the factory. There were twelve of them, their metal faces and bodies suggesting animation and displaying none, like marionettes waiting for their puppeteer.

  Next, there was a desk, facing towards the wall. A laptop screen glowed on top of it, displaying what looked like a video game. I followed the screen to the keyboard, the keyboard to fingers, the fingers up to the face of the person at the controls.

  Matthias Zheng.

  He was humming as he played, so focused on the game that he hadn't seen or heard me. Was this really the guy that was helping the angels to bring the Rapture? Or was I looking at another fake?

  I started walking towards him as though I was supposed to be there. Trying to sneak up might make him scream, and screaming would attract the attention of the archangel above.

  I was almost sitting in his lap before he noticed me. He froze at first, his entire body locking up with tension, before he shoved his chair back and away from me.

  "Whoa! What the he...heck? You shouldn't sneak up on people like that." He looked me over. "Who are you?"

  "You're Matthias Zheng, right?"

  He shrugged. He wasn't afraid of me. "Yeah."

  "Come with me. We need to talk."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  He didn't argue or ask any questions. He got out of his chair and waited for me to lead the way. I brought him outside to the empty trailer.

  "Hop up."

  He looked at me, still unsure of my intentions, and then shrugged and pulled himself into the trailer. I followed behind, easing the doors most of the way closed behind us.

  "Go up to the front and sit."

  Matthias kept walking, following my instructions. He flopped down at the front of the trailer, landing on crossed legs.

  "My name is Landon," I said. "Did Adam tell you about me?"

  "Adam?"

  "The angel."

  "Angel? What are you talking about?"

  Not quite the answers I was expecting. "Yes. Big wings, metal arm?"

  He laughed, putting his hand to his head and rubbing his temple. "Angels don't exist."

  I stood there, feeling more than a little confused. I decided to try a different approach. "You've been building robots."

  He nodded, taking his hand away and smiling. "Yeah. Isn't that what you wanted to talk to me about? My Forward Operational Grunts? Are you an auditor?"

  Forward Operational Grunts. Fists of God. Project Fog. Auditor? The words circulated through my mind. "Yes. They sent me to check on your progress. We're eager to get your units into the field."

  He shook his head. "Only eight are operational so far. I'm having trouble getting my requisitions filled for power supplies."

  "Power supplies?"

  "Yes. I keep asking Gretchen to send in new forms, and to call Nathan to see if he can expedite the acquisitions. According to her, there have been some setbacks at the factory due to the complexity of the engineering pro
cess. I mean, I get it, the fuel cells are still experimental. It's frustrating though, because you guys... well, our bosses, they keep pushing me to get the rest of the units up and running, and I can't."

  I stared at him, trying to make sense of the way he was talking. "Matthias, do you mind if I ask you a question? It's going to sound really strange."

  "Sure, I don't mind."

  "Where are we right now?"

  He laughed. "What do-"

  "I told you it was going to sound strange."

  "We're in one of the transport trailers, outside the lab."

  The lab? "Can you describe the lab to me?"

  "Kind of drab, and the laptop you guys gave me is so last year. I'm making progress on the models though, taking the feedback you've been giving me to improve the specs." He paused and smiled at me again. "I was working on it, I swear. The game was just a break, to let off some energy and refresh."

  I reached behind my back and drew the cursed knife, holding it out to him. "Do you know what this is?"

  "I've seen guns before. This isn't one of the ones I designed though." He took it and put the point to his eye, his hands somehow managing to grip it without touching the sharp edge. "You should get one of mine. I wrote an algorithm to correct the boring to get another two, three hundred feet of accurate range."

  I held out my hand, and he dropped the weapon back into it.

  "Have you ever seen anything... out of the ordinary?" I asked.

  "Like what?"

  "Angels. Demons."

  He started laughing again. "Are you screwing with me? I told you, that stuff doesn't exist."

  I put the dagger away and sat down across from Matthias. I had been baffled by his immunity to the Divine. I had thought maybe he was like me. The truth was even stranger than that.

  Not only was he immune to Divine power, he was completely unable to See them. He was one of the Sleeping, helping Heaven to tilt the balance and not even knowing it. Somehow, his mind was trapped in the subconscious denial that all mortals succumbed to, and not even daily interaction with the Divine had broken him out.

  He was the most blissfully ignorant mortal I had ever heard of.

  "I was just testing you," I said. "I've been getting reports that some of the other engineers are suffering from fatigue and lack of sleep, and its leading them to develop symptoms, such as hallucinations."

  "Oh. That sucks. No, I haven't had that problem. I get plenty of sleep. Gretchen set me up with a nice room right on campus."

  "Excellent. We need to make sure our top people are being taken care of."

  "Yeah, I am. I'm happy. I mean, I don't get out much lately, but - deadlines, you know."

  "Yes, and believe me when I say we're grateful to you. I just have a few more questions I need to ask you about your work, so I can put it in my report."

  "Okay. Shoot."

  "The communication system to coordinate the fogs. Can you describe it to me?"

  His eyes lit up. "Sure." He looked around the trailer. "It would be better with a whiteboard."

  "I have a good visual memory."

  "Okay. Well yeah, one of the problems we were having with the units was keeping them synchronized and performing without having to load massive memory banks and CPU cores, which I'm sure you know would have led to much higher power requirements, which leads to added weight for heat sinks, that sort of thing. So me and Gretchen, she's my assistant, we devised a static comm system. Basically, it gets fitted onto a UAV or other HAO, and it can send and receive signals, and pass information between all of the fogs that are in range. In simple terms, it's like cloud-based warfare."

  In more ways than he realized. I didn't know what Gretchen's real name was, but I could guess who she was, and I could start to piece together the clues to this mystery.

  Somehow, the angels had discovered the work Matthias was doing with the organic wiring. Somehow, they had learned that for some reason he had a strange inability to grasp the concept of the Divine. They had used their contacts at Los Alamos to reach out to the company he was working for, and recruit him to their cause. Then they had shipped him off to the lab, put him on Project Fog, and told him whatever they wanted to about what he was doing. He couldn't see through the veil to the truth, and so he had followed blindly in the name of his country, and not only perfected the robotics, but also developed the systems needed to control them, at least as far as his mortal brain could take it.

  Gretchen, the archangel, had picked up the slack, using his knowledge of technology and enhancing it with her knowledge of Heavenly scripture. Between the two of them, they had created a perfect system.

  He had also confirmed what I had suspected. Adam's hand was acting as the server, syncing the data between the Fists and helping keep them coordinated.

  "Let's say our enemies wanted to disable the fog," I said. "Where are we on that front?"

  "It wouldn't be easy," he said. "The value of organic wiring isn't just the cost savings. The fog is completely immune to EMP. So is the comm system. The armor can take high-caliber fire, and we just recently added some new bolstering to protect some of the vulnerable joints." He paused, looking up to the ceiling in thought. "No. Short of a high-powered explosion, the fogs themselves are pretty much indestructible, just like you ordered. I mean, if you could manage to hit the UAV and bring it down, I think that would be the weakest link. Shut down the server and the units lose their brains. Last time I checked, there wasn't a military on Earth that had the tech to see a drone at fifty thousand feet, let alone knock it down."

  "Impressive," I said, my mind reeling. It wasn't enough to knock Adam out of the sky. If I wanted to stop him, stop the Fists, I needed to cut off his arm. That was easier said than done when he could fly, and I couldn't.

  "Oh yeah, its totally cool. What do you think about the warheads we designed? And the close combat capabilities? Oh, and my success in miniaturizing the circuitry. That was a real challenge. I didn't sleep for weeks trying to work that one out."

  "We've been very impressed with all of your efforts."

  He was beaming at the praise. "I'm going to call my mom after this. She'll be so happy to know how well I'm doing."

  "There are a dozen of the fog units in the lab. Are all of them only waiting on a power supply to be operational?"

  "Mmm Hmm. Once you guys get us the fuel cells, we can switch all of them on."

  "What about comm systems?"

  "We only have the one right now. It was a prototype, you know. But we should be done with the load testing in the next week or two, once we get all the units online, and then we can start building more."

  "Exciting times."

  He laughed. "Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. If you're done with your questions, I should probably get back to work."

  I stared at him, trying to decide what to do. It was clear I couldn't risk leaving him here, which meant I had two options. Take him with me, or kill him.

  No, I couldn't kill him. What if he went to Heaven, and decided to continue playing along? What if he didn't even realize he had died? There was something about him, something that made him unique to all of mankind, and I needed to understand what it was, and what the fallout of that would be.

  "I had heard there were two new engineers being brought in today," I said. "Have you seen them?"

  "No. I've been in the lab all day. I hadn't heard anything about new blood."

  "If they had arrived, do you know where they would be?"

  "Yeah, probably bunked near me."

  "Can you take me over to them? I'm not familiar with the layout yet. I spent the last couple of weeks in New Mexico."

  He was hesitant. "I don't know..."

  "You can get back to work as soon as you get me there."

  "Okay, why not." He got to his feet. "Why did you want to do this in the trailer anyway?"

  "They haven't given me an office yet, and I wanted our conversation to be private. I'll be speaking to Gretchen a little later, to get her feed
back, too."

  "Sounds good. Follow me."

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  We didn't make it out of the trailer.

  I was just about to push open the rear door when the familiar thump of something heavy hitting the ground next to us caused me to freeze in place. It was followed by three... no... four... no five more thumps.

  Six Fists. A dozen angels. Adam.

  Then I heard the voice.

  "What are you doing? You can't do this to me. Angels don't use torture."

  There was a small crack in the trailer doors. I wasn't going to risk being seen.

  "I really have to get back to work," Matthias said. "Gretchen gets pissed when I disappear on her."

  I couldn't afford being discovered right now, and if they found Matthias gone they were sure to go looking for him. I rounded on him, grabbing his arm and pushing him against the wall. "Nobody knows I'm here, got it? You'll jeopardize the whole audit."

  He nodded and smiled. "No problem. I won't say a word."

  "If you see me watching, act like I'm not there."

  "Okay. Okay."

  I let him go and moved back into the shadows. He pushed open the trailer door and hopped down.

  "Matthias?"

  It was Adam's voice.

  "Hey, Captain Rogers."

  "What were you doing in the trailer?"

  Matthias laughed. "Oh, just taking a little break. I needed someplace quiet to think. You took the fogs out for a field run? I didn't even hear you."

  "Yes. Just some short maneuvers around the base."

  "Cool."

  "I've got something for you."

  "Hey, what are you doing? Get your damn hands off me. You son of a bitch. I'm going to-"

  It was a third voice for sure, muffled at the end, as though something had been shoved into the speaker's mouth.