Seb was silent for a moment. He turned and looked back at Mee, still standing by Walt’s grave. The rain was beginning to ease.
“And what about planets with no Manna?” he said. “Planets that weren’t seeded by the Rozzers. What happens to them?”
“They are of no concern,” said H’wan. “Without Manna, no race has ever taken to the stars beyond their immediate surroundings. These races are studied, but any intervention would be unethical. Unfortunately, humankind is not one such race. I am sorry, World Walker.”
Seb felt a surge of hot anger.
“I will stop you,” he said. He felt a wave of fear from the creature. It lasted milliseconds, but it was definitely there. H’wan had interacted with Seb’s Manna and learned virtually nothing. Seb was a mystery. Seb guessed the feeling of not being in complete control was a new one for H’wan.
“It would be unwise to try,” said H’wan. “Your abilities are strong. But you are immature, not in full control of your power. This, I see plainly. An attempt to stop the Engine might cripple you, whether you were successful or otherwise. And the Rozzers would simply return and complete the task.”
“When?” said Seb.
“Soon,” said H’wan. “Around five hundred years.”
“A lot can happen in five hundred years.”
“Perhaps,” said H’wan, “but nothing good, I am afraid.” The figure stretched upward, standing tall again. As it looked like he was preparing to make a dramatic exit, Seb2 tagged him with a tiny burst of Manna, containing particles designed to mimic those around them, but send spatial information to Seb. A homing beacon, effectively. H’wan would be sure to detect it when it became active, but a nanosecond was all it would take to send the ship’s location when Seb needed it.
“We may meet again, World Walker. I am sorry the circumstances were thus.”
There was a roaring sound as H’wan’s body lengthened, growing taller and thinner, then becoming the black lightning which now bolted up into the atmosphere with a sonic boom that rattled windows in the nearest suburbs of the city.
Meera picked her way through the last row of gravestones and put her hand on Seb’s shoulder.
“How much did you hear?” he said.
“Not much,” she said. “Who the hell says ‘thus’?”
Seb laughed. Anyone who could see the funny side when the world was ending was worth hanging on to. Although, as the world was about to end, that might not be for very long.
He kissed her.
“I’m putting you on a plane to London right now,” he said. “Go see Kate. I’ll be there soon.”
Meera looked at him.
“You take care, Seb Varden,” she said. “And remember, I’ve never been the feeble woman who needs rescuing by her prince and I never will be. I almost jumped off a roof to stop that from happening and I’d do the same again. I love you. Take care. Because if you need rescuing, I’ll have to negotiate two lots of airport security, plus a transatlantic flight to get here. Better if you promise me you won’t need rescuing.”
“I promise, I won’t need rescuing,” said Seb.
Mee called a cab and fifteen minutes later, was on her way to Mexico City airport.
Seb watched the cab drive out of sight.
“Can we stop the Unmaking Engine?” he thought.
“Possibly,” said Seb2, “but you’re really not going to like it.”
Seb sighed. “Tell me on the way,” he thought. “‘Because even if the human race is going to survive past the next couple of days, there’s one guy who’s definitely not gonna wake up again after tomorrow morning.”
“Let’s do it,” said Seb2, with more confidence than either of them felt. How do you find a man nobody has ever seen?
38
New York
Mason ate breakfast while listening to Bach’s Cello Suites. There was something about the sense of order suggested by the music that moved him. There was a balance there, a tension, between a rigidity of form and structure, and a joyful exuberance. The pure energy of existence was fleetingly captured by Bach, but it was like a photograph of a storm. It could only point to a raw experience infinitely more powerful than anything it could convey, even with a talent like JS Bach behind it. Mason was moved, yes, but after listening to it regularly for more than thirty years, he still didn’t know if he liked it.
He poured a coffee and rolled his wheelchair away from the table. As he approached the desk, screens flickered into life. He pushed a button and the sound of the cello faded.
Rosa came in and cleared away his breakfast. Now in her sixties, she was still fit and healthy, if a little thin. She had adapted well to the life Mason had demanded of her decades before. Until the death of her father, Isaac, she had still shown occasional lapses of good sense, on one occasion, even trying to get a message out to the police via the building’s doorman. The violent deaths of the doorman, his wife and their young family in—apparently—a psychotic attack by a killer who was never found, took all of the fight out of Rosa. She accepted her position. When her father entered his last illness, Mason allowed her to care for the old man. By then, her daughter Ruth was ten years old and capable of handling most of Mason’s day to day needs.
Ruth was in bed today. She was in her third trimester, and Mason had allowed her to rest much of the time. In fact, he had insisted on it.
Rosa shot him a look as she took the tray away. He wondered if she suspected the real identity of the father of Ruth’s fetus. Mason had told them the donor for the artificial insemination had been carefully selected merely to produce a strong, healthy child. He had lied. He didn’t feel driven by some sense of destiny to produce an heir. He was just curious to find out how a child of his might turn out.
A new generation was necessary to ensure the smooth running of the household, anyway. Rosa had never attempted to escape again, and Mason had made it clear that suicide wasn’t an option for her, unless she wanted her daughter to suffer for the rest of her life. Now, Ruth was about to be a mother, Rosa a grandmother. Mason’s hold over them would be strengthened further. They were the only people on Earth who knew his identity, and they were bound to him by ties he would never allow to be broken.
The flashing light on the right-hand screen meant someone had left a voicemail on Westlake’s emergency number. There had been no news for four days, when Westlake had sent a text confirming that the mission was live. No news about the whereabouts of Meera Patel or Sebastian Varden. And no news, in Mason’s long experience, was invariably bad news. He clicked the mouse and sat back, sipping at his coffee.
It was a woman’s voice.
“This is Beta. From Westlake’s team. He’s dead. The mission failed. I was taken in by the Federales, but I escaped. Westlake planted a tracker on Meera Patel. I acquired her at the airport. Call me using this username.”
Mason showed no outward signs of disturbance as he made a note of the username Beta was using. He regretted Westlake’s death. The man had been an excellent operative. Did as he was told, didn’t ask questions. Took pleasure in killing, but not so much that it would affect his efficiency. He would be hard to replace. And now Beta. If it really was Beta, of course. It was possible she had succeeded where Westlake had failed, but he would proceed with extreme caution. His excitement at finally capturing Patel must not cloud his judgement. He breathed in and out slowly. One step at a time.
He made the call.
His computer screen showed a featureless room, no more than a cell. Tied to a chair against the wall was Meera Patel. Standing next to her was a short, muscular woman with a knife. The woman stared out of the screen.
“Turn on your camera,” she said.
Mason ignored her. He smiled. Westlake had done his duty. Beta obviously knew nothing about the way he worked. He clicked on a file and brought up the photographs of Westlake’s unit. The woman on the screen matched the photograph.
“Before we continue,” he whispered, “I need you to be clear about
the dynamics at play. I give orders, you obey them. Unquestioningly.”
The woman smirked.
“Things change,” she said. “All I know about you is a name. Mason. But considering how well we all got paid over the years, I know you’re one rich son of a bitch. And that’s all I need to know. I’m thinking it’s about time I retired. So, I’m wondering how much she’s worth to you. I’m thinking ten million dollars.”
Mason chuckled. It was a sound with no humor in it.
“Really?” he whispered. “Only ten million? Not twenty, or fifty? Why such a small amount?”
Beta’s brows furrowed into a frown. She walked over to Meera, lifting the knife. Slowly and deliberately, she pressed the tip of the blade against the woman’s shoulder. After a couple of seconds, blood started to stain the white shirt she was wearing. Meera’s face was pale, her lips pushed firmly together. Then, as Beta drew the knife down her arm, opening up a wound six inches long, she started to scream with pain.
Beta smiled at the camera, picked up a roll of duct tape and stopped the scream, reducing the sound to a muffled whimper. Patel looked at her with impotent fury and hatred.
“Keep messing around with me, I’ll just kill her and disappear,” said Beta. “She’s a liability right now. Wire me the money and I’ll send you this address.”
She reeled off details of a Cayman Island bank account. Mason began to wonder if this had been her plan for a while.
“Westlake’s report said Miss Patel looked very different these days,” whispered Mason.
“She did,” said Beta. “When Westlake shot her, she changed. She’s looked like this ever since. Westlake said her protection had gone. That was why he okayed the operation. Said Varden was out of the picture.”
Mason looked at the screen for a long moment. He knew it was just as likely that this was a trap as it was that Beta had genuinely managed to acquire Patel. But ten million dollars to find out either way was a bargain. If Sebastian Varden was behind this, he still had no idea who he was dealing with. Just a voice on a screen, protected by a labyrinth of proxy servers, dead ends and blind alleys. Untraceable.
He clicked some keys.
“It’s done,” he whispered. “The money is in your account.” He watched the screen as Beta sat down in front of it and clicked through to check. She smiled.
“I’ll send you the address in ten minutes,” she said. “I have no idea how big your organization is, but I would have to be pretty stupid to give up my location while I’m still sitting here. I’m sure you understand.”
“Oh, I do,” whispered Mason. “But you should know one thing before you walk away.”
“What?”
“The daughter you think no one knows about? The one your parents helped put up for adoption while you were still in high school?”
Beta’s face had paled but she showed no other sign at being affected by the knowledge that the biggest secret of her life was, apparently, no secret at all. Mason admired her self-control.
“She is growing up to be a charming young lady,” he whispered.
In the room on the screen, Beta stood up, sheathed her knife and took out a cellphone.
“I’ll leave the laptop open so you can keep an eye on her,” she said, her voice only slightly shakier than it had been before. “I’ll text the address in ten minutes. Number?”
Mason opened a drawer and took out a burner phone, turning it on. He read the number to her. Single use, then he would use Manna to reduce it to ash.
The woman on the screen tilted the laptop slightly so that it centered on Meera Patel, now silent and glaring at the camera. Beta pulled the duct tape from her captive’s mouth and walked out of shot. Mason heard a door open and close, then the only sound was Patel’s ragged breathing. The blood was running freely down her arm and dripping onto the stone floor, but she seemed completely unconcerned. She just stared into the camera as if she could see him sitting there. And the look on her face was one of utter contempt.
Mason did nothing during the ten-minute wait. He just stared at the screen. He no longer thought it was possible that this was some sort of trap. Westlake’s last message had said Sebastian Varden wasn’t with her, that she was unprotected. All the facts had subsequently borne this out. Losing Westlake and gaining Patel was a trade he would make any day.
The phone buzzed on his desk. He thumbed the screen into life and clicked on messages. Paseo de la Reforma 305, Colonia Cuauhtémoc, Mexico, 06500 D.F.
He looked away from the live feed and typed the address into the search engine, zooming in to get a clear view. As he did so, a golden spider climbed out of the phone’s screen, darted across the desk and jumped into the mass of cables behind Mason’s screens. The movement caught his eye and he glanced over, just catching a glimpse of the tiny insect as it disappeared. He looked back at the screen, at first unsure, then registering what he was looking at. It was Mexico City, all right. He was looking at the American Embassy.
“I’ll take your little girl, then I’ll kill you, you stupid bitch,” he said as he closed one window and opened another program. This was tracking software he had exclusively commissioned; sophisticated and, technologically, well beyond anything used by the US government. Beta had scrambled the signal from her laptop, using proxy servers, but her trail was nowhere near as well concealed as Mason’s own, and he knew his program would find Patel’s location in three to four hours. All he had to do was wait. He could deal with Beta later.
“Rosa,” he said, “another pot of coffee.”
On the screen, Mee was now sitting absolutely still. She didn’t look panicked, in pain, fearful or angry any more. She glanced to her left. To Mason’s surprise, Beta walked back into shot and smiled at the camera.
“You just made the biggest mistake of your life, Beta” whispered Mason. “You’ll beg me to kill you in the end. Any last words?”
Beta didn’t reply. Meera Patel did. But first she stood up, the ropes binding her evaporating like smoke. Beside her, Beta collapsed, her face caving in, her muscular shoulders sliding away from her neck, her torso folding over and toppling forward, leaving a mound of dirt.
Mason looked back at Patel. She had gone. Sebastian Varden was standing there. The computer screens flickered, then, one by one, they went blank, leaving just the image of Varden, who had now walked up to the camera and was looking straight at him.
“I know where you live,” said Varden, before that screen, too, went dark.
39
Sym saw the whole thing happen by using the camera in Mason’s burner cellphone. It was a cheap phone, so the quality wasn’t great, but it was the only camera in the entire apartment. Mason was obviously paranoid about having his image captured.
Sym watched Mason wheel himself over to the huge picture window that dominated the room. Sym had opened up the mic on the burner so he could hear what was going on. When Seb appeared in the middle of the room, he made no sound whatever, but Mason somehow sensed he was there.
“I knew this day would come eventually,” he said, without turning. “You don’t have to be a student of history to recognize the temporary nature of human power structures. I have held all of the cards for such a long time, I might be forgiven for getting a little complacent. But that hasn’t happened. I’ve always been prepared for every eventuality, always planned carefully, always been at least two moves ahead of my opponents. Even ruling by fear was a deliberate choice. I’m no sadist, Mr Varden.”
Seb was standing absolutely still in the center of the room. He looked at the slight figure in the wheelchair. Finally, he was in the same room as the man responsible for murdering his friend, and countless others. A man willing to take Meera’s freedom forever, just to try to control Seb. A man who was the perfect example of how humans had perverted Manna use, turning it into a way of gaining power over others. Using it to hurt, maim, and kill. Men and women like Mason were the reason an alien species was prepared to wipe the human race from the face of the plane
t and start again. Knowing what he did about Mason, Seb couldn’t entirely blame them.
“Those who maintain their power through respect, tradition or love all fail. As—eventually—do those who rule by fear. The difference is, fear is more effective. Until you came along, I was the most powerful Manna user on Earth. At least, that’s how I was perceived. My anonymity has gone a long way to making my reputation still more intimidating to those who might consider taking me on. My organization has a primitive power structure at its heart. The strongest rules the tribe until a stronger challenger comes along. And here you are.”
Mason turned around and faced Seb for the first time. Seb said nothing, just stared at the conscienceless killer in front of him.
At first glance, Mason still looked very much like the thirteen-year old boy who had discovered Manna in the Proclaimerz church nearly four decades previously. His legs were withered and the rest of his body was thin. His complexion was pale, his eyes a faded cornflower blue. His hair was sandy in color. It was only after the first few seconds that it became obvious that Mason was no child. The lines around his eyes were clear and deep-set. His neck was wrinkled, his Adam’s apple prominent. His hands, delicate, the skin almost translucent, looked like those of an old woman.
Seb wondered for a moment why such a powerful Manna user would choose to remain in a wheelchair. If you could have any body you wished, why this one?
Mason laughed.
“I can see what you’re thinking, Sebastian,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t make much of a poker player. I see hate, of course. Can’t blame you for that. I see anger, determination. You’re here to kill me, that much is plain. But I’m not exactly what you were expecting, am I? And you’re wondering why I chose—this.” He indicated the wheelchair.
“I don’t care,” said Seb. “And you’re right, I am going to kill you.” He took a couple of paces toward Mason. Mason held up a thin hand.
The World Walker Series Box Set Page 61
