“Remember what is important. Your name is Alice Gallow, and you’re an Auditor, and the most feared woman in the world. You always smile, because nothing bothers you, and because you express your true purpose with each action,” Rebecca said, slowly releasing the dampeners as she chased down the last of Alice’s physical tension. “My name is Rebecca Levy, and I am your best friend, and I will always be your best friend. You can trust me absolutely. I will never lie to you or hurt you, and you can never go so far into the dark that I cannot pull you back. Remember that, even if you forget everything else.”
Alice nodded.
“I remember,” she murmured. “I am Alice, and you are Becca.”
“That’s what’s important,” Rebecca said, hugging Alice. “Forget everything else, if you must. I’m your best friend, and I’ll be your memory, too, and anything else that you need. Just so long as you never forget about me.”
“Yeah,” Alice said agreeably, opening her eyes. “You’re a lifesaver, Becca.”
“Don’t I know it,” Rebecca said, giving her shoulders a final squeeze. “Feeling better?”
“I feel like a million bucks,” Alice said, stretching. “So much better.”
“Ready to go put some people in their place, then?”
“Always,” Alice said, humming to herself. “Bring it on.”
“Let’s go to the library,” Rebecca said, steering Alice by her elbow. “Something bad is happening there. I was thinking it was Alistair, but I don’t know. This feels like something else.”
“Uh huh,” Alice said, grinning. “Who’s Alistair? Someone I know?”
Rebecca had to use her protocol to conceal her own reaction.
“Alistair is a very dangerous telepath and a total bastard,” Rebecca explained gently. “If you see him, you need to take him out quickly. Kill him on sight. He’s as deadly as they come, and you don’t want to give him any chances.”
“All in a day’s work, I guess.” Alice yawned. “This is work, right? Not a personal thing?”
“It’s a bit of both,” Rebecca said. “It’s part of the job for sure, but at the same time, Alistair is an asshole. He came damn close to killing us all, put me in a coma, and terrorized the kids. Michael’s just barely out of the hospital, and…and he’s the fucking worst, and we are going to kill the shit out of him, so he doesn’t get another chance to kill us. Okay?”
“Okay,” Alice agreed, cracking her neck. “One question.”
“Yeah?”
“Who is Michael?” Alice leered. “Your boyfriend?”
***
Anastasia awoke in surprise and displeasure.
At first, she thought that someone was taking advantage of her exhaustion to grope her while she slept, and immediately thought of Renton. Then her suspicions shifted to telepathic intrusion, and again, she thought of Renton.
She was surprised when Mr. Crane launched its assault, her mind flooded with sudden, toxic darkness, like a crude oil spill poisoning a pristine bay. Mr. Crane bypassed her psychic defenses effortlessly, ignoring shields and implants as its malign influence crept toward the core of her.
Still half-asleep and deeply confused, Anastasia activated her protocol.
***
John Parson’s form was twisted and elongated, his tumorous body warped by the carcinogenic presence of the Church of Sleep. He towered above Eerie like a monument made of bones and rags, the cage of his chest filled with cinders and soot, his eyes as black as ink spilled across a finished page. His fingers were barbed wire and jagged bone, and they dripped with a sickly green fluid that made the dirt sizzle and hiss.
“I almost feel sorry for you, now,” Eerie declared. “You’re all sharp edges.”
“I was a fool to cling to illusions of agency and independence. That is done with,” he said, his voice strangled and unnatural. “I am Representative Parson, and this is what I’ve always been.”
“You always were a monster, but I liked it better when you were more subtle about it.”
“The Church corrodes all that it touches. We are only as far as the antechamber and look what it has done to me. Worse will happen to you in the White Room.”
“I don’t get it, but whatever. Do you really want to fight?”
“I do not want anything any longer,” John whined. “I am a Representative. You belong here, just as I do. The Church of Sleep is your home.”
Eerie glanced around the dim cathedral, strange light struggling through panes of stained glass to spill onto chilly marble floors. She blew on her numb fingers, chilled despite the mittens she wore. The cathedral was dim and shadowed, but the corner that John Parson inhabited was shrouded in unnatural darkness, mercifully obscuring the details of its horrid form.
Heat and light died in his entropic presence. Mantras wriggled across the surface of John’s exoskeleton, toxic sutras that poisoned the air around it.
“All that work grooming Alexander Warner,” Representative Parson hissed. “And where is he now?”
“I’ve lost too much already,” Eerie said. “I changed my mind.”
“This deviates from my expectations. You were meant to offer him up in your place, and now you return without him, of your own volition? Your actions make no sense.”
“I told you, I changed my mind right at the end. Destiny is stupid. We don’t have to do anything we don’t want to do,” Eerie said. “Did you know that Alex and I are officially dating? I’ve done all sorts of amazing things that I never expected to do. I went to school. I took dance classes, and I learned to knit. I made friends. I’m in two different clubs. Two! You have no idea what I’ve become, what I’m becoming, what I already am. You don’t know anything about me.”
There was so little of anything recognizable to John’s face, but a strange look nonetheless crossed his remaining features.
“I had my own experiences. Perhaps that was once of importance to me, but I have been transformed. Restored. I have returned to the Church. If you have achieved any sort of maturity, then you know our return was inevitable.”
“I know what it’s like to be underestimated. That’s all.”
“A final offer. You will accompany me to the White Room,” Representative Parson declared. “No further harm will come to this place, in return.”
“No, but thank you. I won’t cooperate.”
“You have no choice. This is where choice comes to die, Ériu.”
“I don’t agree,” Eerie replied. “We were both forced to come here. We’re a lot alike, when you think about it. You fought to keep this from happening, remember?”
“That was a misunderstanding, born of my long separation from the Church. I have remembered, and I have submitted. No one can fight the Church. Its very existence has constrained our futures.”
“You’re wrong,” Eerie said. “There is a way out.”
“There is no such thing, Changeling.”
“There is! I convince you to leave me and my friends and Central alone,” Eerie said, with a little shrug. “Simple. And my name is not Changeling, or even Ériu. Not anymore. Please call me Eerie.”
“That is not your name!”
“That is what my friends call me,” Eerie said. “Don’t you want to be friends?”
“You have no name. You have a designation and a destiny. You will sleep, and you will suffer, and you will diminish. We are already beyond the threshold. Look at me, Ériu,” John said, stretching out his grotesque limbs. “We have already been parasitized by the Church of Sleep. Can you feel the worms beneath your skin?” The darkness around Representative Parson changed in a way that Eerie lacked words to describe. It became fiercer, perhaps, extruding new teeth through inky gums. “The Church is inside of us as much as we are inside of it. We are beyond wanting and hoping.”
“You’re wrong,” Eerie said confidently. “I will wave at you when you walk away, Representative Parson.”
“You are bluffing,” Parson said, eyes darting about like a rodent. “There is no
such possibility.”
“If you really think so, then there’s no harm in letting me try, is there?” Eerie stepped carefully out of her sneakers and rolled up her sleeves. “You don’t mind, right?”
“I have murdered your future. I strangled your future in its crib, before it could hope to actualize. Can you not feel the White Room approaching? You are very nearly there,” John said. “Make your argument, if that is how you would spend your remaining moments. Perhaps it will amuse the Fifth Assembly to observe your desperation.”
“I’m not going to argue! We aren’t going to fight at all.” Eerie took her phone out and paged quickly through applications. “I’m going to persuade you.”
“How could you possibly hope to do so? No matter how you beg and plead, I will…”
“I won’t beg.” Eerie propped her phone against her knitting basket. “I won’t even ask permission.”
The music started gently, synthetic windchimes and cold electronics. The beat followed shortly after.
“I’m going to dance now,” Eerie declared, putting on a headband to hold back her hair. “Please watch carefully, Representative Parson.”
***
Chandi glanced at the clock, and then returned her attention back to writing. She had nearly filled the leather-bound Japanese notebook with her exquisite longhand. She had found the notebook in a desk in one of the abandoned offices on the upper story of the Science building, along with a pink and gold Montblanc fountain pen that she had every intention of keeping.
Aside from the work she had done in return for Emily’s protection, she had spent all her time writing in it, detailing the full extent of her predictions. Chandi had always struggled with the near future, her real talent lying in the analysis of middle- and late-term possibilities, so that was the subject of her notes.
Chandi did not have a plan to get the journal into the Mistress of the Black Sun’s hands. She did not even have an idea of how that might be done. She felt it important to do her best regardless, in the hopes that it would somehow work out, that Emily Muir would honor her wishes and see it delivered. It was the only apology she could offer, and the only proof of her unshaken loyalty to the Black Sun.
Perhaps, Chandi hoped, it might be enough to restore her reputation.
Posthumously.
She glanced at the clock again and frowned.
She was nearly finished, but then again, Chandi had only a few minutes left to work with.
Her hand shook when she returned to her writing, marring the symmetrical loop over a lowercase “l”.
She felt a breath of air on her cheeks, a result of a displacement of mass.
“You’re early,” Chandi said, scribbling out a few more words. “Can you give me just a moment?”
“We’re not early. We are right on time, I hope.”
Chandi dropped her pen and looked up.
Katya leaned on an older man’s shoulder for support, still swathed in bandages.
“This is Marcus,” Katya said, gesturing to her grey-haired company, who nodded at her in a friendly way. “He’s okay.”
Chandi was shaken, breaking out in a cold sweat.
“Why…what are you doing here?”
“We are here to save your life,” Katya said, sinking into a chair with Marcus’s help. “Egill Johannsson is coming for you, isn’t he? I need to know exactly when that’s gonna happen. It’s crucial, because I’ll have to use timers. Wiring would be too obvious, not to mention the remote.”
Chandi closed her journal.
“He is meant to arrive in five minutes,” Chandi said. “You aren’t meant to be here at all.”
“That’s Eerie’s doing, I’m sure,” Katya said. “She’s throwing everything off.”
“What do you plan to do?”
“It’s a surprise.” Katya grinned at Marcus. “Hey, old man. You have one more trip in you?”
“I have as many as I need,” Marcus said. “Where do you want to go?”
“I want you to take Chandi somewhere far away,” Katya said. “To a Black Sun safehouse, if possible. Don’t tell me where – just in case this goes wrong, I don’t want to know.”
“That’s quite a consideration,” Marcus said. “Why don’t you come with us instead?”
Katya hobbled around the desk and urged Chandi up and over to Marcus. Chandi grabbed her notebook from the desk and clutched it to her chest.
“I’m going to do my job,” Katya declared, taking Chandi’s seat behind the desk. “I’m going to kill Egill Johannsson. That’s what Ana would want me to do.”
“But you’re hurt!” Chandi pointed unnecessarily at Katya’s missing hand and shortened leg. “You can’t possibly think you can—”
“I only need a few seconds,” Katya said, picking up the marble-clad fountain pen and examining the nib thoughtfully. “The rest is just timing.”
“Are you sure about this?” Marcus rubbed his chin while he studied her. “Don’t make a decision that you’ll regret.”
“I’m sure,” Katya said. “Get her out of here, okay?”
Marcus hesitated a moment longer, then he nodded and offered Chandi his hand.
She glanced at Katya, and then put her trembling hand in his.
Marcus guided her gently in an imaginary direction, and Katya was alone in the office.
Katya took the pen apart, extracting the nib and then leaving the rest in a pile on the desk. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the headrest.
There was no sound in the office beside the ticking of the retro brass-and-wood clock.
“Sorry, Timor,” she said quietly. “I tried.”
Katya wiped her eyes and composed herself.
She hobbled across the room a few times with the aid of her crutch, making guesses. She opened the purloined kit bag, stared at the charges for a moment, then tossed the bag of detonators on the desk.
She set about placing the charges – one on either side of the desk, hidden beneath the lip of the desktop, and the other two on the underside of the guest chairs. She attached the detonators, setting the timers for two minutes. When all the charges were in place, Katya activated each timer, moving as fast as she could from one to the next.
She settled at the front of the desk, sitting awkwardly with her remaining leg concealing the shaped charge. Her missing leg made balance impossible, and she was forced to constantly shift her weight to keep from falling off the edge of the desk.
Katya gritted her teeth and bore it.
She did not have to wait too long.
Egill Johannsson was still new to his stolen apport abilities, arriving a few centimeters off the floor, causing him to stumble.
The pen nib disappeared from between her fingers.
Egill yelped and apported across the room, clutching his head, the bloody nib dropping to the carpet. Katya pushed off the desk, momentum carrying her across the distance to Egill.
She thrust her fingers at his throat.
A barrier flared, deflecting the blow. Egill seized her fingers.
“You bitch!” Egill twisted her fingers back. “What are you doing—?”
Katya tried to knee him in the crotch and was rebuffed by the barrier. A blow to his liver found the same result.
Egill grabbed her arm and tossed her, swinging her up and slamming her on top of the desk. He struck her across the face, then reared back and punched her, splitting her lip and drawing blood.
“Why are you here?” Egill grabbed Katya by her collar and pulled her up. “What the hell is this?”
Katya smashed her forehead into his face. Egill cried out and stumbled back, blood spurting from his nose.
She pushed herself up on her stump and snatched at a knife in his belt, pulling it from its scabbard before Egill realized what was happening. Katya lunged forward, but a barrier stopped the blade short of his stomach.
Egill grabbed her wrist and twisted until she was face down on the desktop, and she was forced to release the knife.
He kicked the knife away and cranked on her shoulder, dislocating the joint as he ground her face into the wood.
Katya caught him with a kick to the knee, but her second attempt was brushed away.
He grabbed a handful of her hair and tugged her head back.
She flailed about with her arm, but the dislocated shoulder made the blows feeble.
Egill slammed her face into the desk, and Katya’s vision blurred.
He pulled her head back up and then hammered it into the desk again. Katya felt her cheekbone fracture and cried out in pain.
Egill pushed her onto her back and punched her in the jaw.
“Stupid bitch,” Egill hissed. “What can you do to me?”
Katya laughed and spit blood on the desk.
Then she went for his left eye with her remaining thumb.
Egill knocked her hand aside and slugged her again. Katya slumped across the desk.
“Where is she?” Egill put his hands around her throat. “Where is Chandi Tuesday?”
“Gone,” Katya whispered, pink froth at the corners of her mouth. “She’s gone.”
Egill squeezed her throat, and Katya writhed and gurgled and grabbed at his fingers.
“You don’t even have a protocol worth stealing,” Egill groused, throttling her. “Ridiculous.”
He strangled her until her arms dropped down at her sides, until she stopped kicking and her lips started to turn blue. He crushed her windpipe with his thumbs, leaving behind a dent in her throat when he finally let go.
“Stupid girl,” he said, wiping his hands on her sweater. “What was this supposed to accomplish?”
The first charge exploded, sending Egill flying across the room as it blew the desk to splinters.
***
The Church of Sleep refused to conform to notions of distance or size, even as they approached the collapsed entrance to the Main Library, seemingly no closer or further than when they had started. The massive edifice crouched over them, a sheer wall of utterly smooth stone so vast that the curvature of the building was invisible. The stone itself was of no color, without features, cracks, or fissures, with no points of ingress or variations in theme or line. The Church rose into the sky as if the horizon had been set on its side, disappearing into a halo of agitated black mist, here and there punctured with bolts of still-life lightning.
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 82
