As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

“Fair,” he echoed. “And you are concerned with what is fair, are you?”

  “Sometimes.”

  Ross waited, demonstrating near-glacial patience. And when he’d lingered just long enough to let her know he could wait out the next ice age, he broke the silence. “How long have you been working for the Division, Agent Thorne?”

  “That’s in my file. Along with what my favorite breakfast cereal is, I’d imagine.”

  “What have you been told about the origins of the Division?”

  “Nothing.”

  Ross knew that was a lie. The standard lie all Division agents parroted. But every recruit heard an unofficial version of events. Through planted rumors, they got some of the story of how the Division came to be. According to those same rumors, the organization had started as part of the U.S. government, a branch of the Secret Service during the Grant administration. And, according to that version, like many organizations, somewhere along the line it had gone multinational; it was simply too big, its reach too long, for just one government to control. Now no one but those at the top knew just who was pulling the strings. “Have you ever wondered why you were requested for this detail, Agent Thorne?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you didn’t think to ask.”

  “I figured you would tell me if it mattered.”

  “It does,” Ross said. “You attended the University, correct?”

  “Yes, I did. Graduated summa.”

  Ross nodded. “And you are quite familiar with the ways of the University and, in particular, the Order of Sormen.” He watched her tense. She tried to hide it immediately, but a quick flick of the eyes betrayed her. It was a tell even a world-class poker player would have been hard pressed to detect, but Ross saw it just the same.

  “I wouldn’t say that I’m familiar, exactly. I know of them. Every student—”

  “Agent Thorne, you have to admit that you are familiar with at least one member of the Order.” The time had come to push his advantage. If she was going to be an effective player in this game, she would need to have some skin in it. If that meant Ross had to use a fillet knife to get it, so be it.

  “I don’t know what you are—”

  “Eric Hitchens was a student about the same time you were. I think it’s fair to say that you were familiar with him. Intimately familiar.” Ross watched as Thorne’s red-faced anger gave way to the gray of shock. He waited until it blushed with indignity before continuing. “Although that intimacy was not consensual, was it?”

  Thorne sat in silence, her gaze cast downward. Ross let that silence flood the room until the two of them nearly drowned in it. “No,” she said finally. “It was not . . . consensual.” Thorne collapsed into herself like a deflated toy balloon. “How did you—”

  “The Division knows all there is to know about you, Agent Thorne. Therefore, I know all there is to know. The how is not important. It is the why.”

  Thorne shook her head. Ross could see her jaw muscles popping under her cheeks as she ground her teeth. “Why, then?”

  “We’re getting to that,” Ross said, tenting his fingers in front of him and resting his chin on the apex. “Now, you reported the assault to the campus police. But the Order has ways of keeping what it wants secret. It has ways of quieting even a senator’s daughter.”

  Again, Ross let the silence hover. By rights, no one should have known about what had happened to her that night when she was just an eighteen-year-old freshman, not even the Division. The University buried it, the Order of Sormen saw to it that anyone who had heard the accusations was dealt with, and after it was clear that nothing could be done, Thorne herself never spoke about the assault again, not to another soul.

  But Ross made it his business to know what others did not. It was yet another trick to keep the memories at bay. “Mr. Hitchens has gone on to become quite a powerful man, hasn’t he?”

  Thorne shuffled farther back, eyes still not able to meet his. “Yes.”

  “He’s vice president of his father’s investment-banking firm and in time will take the reins. And he retains strong ties to the Order itself. As was the plan all along, I suppose.” Ross leaned a bit closer, narrowing the gap that Thorne had attempted to widen. “And you could have done the same.”

  “What?”

  “You could have followed in your father’s footsteps. He’d been grooming you to take his Senate seat since the moment he realized your mother would never bear him a son. You could have taken the easy way. But you didn’t. Instead, you joined the Division. Why?”

  Thorne finally looked up at him. Her eyes were twin glaciers. Good, thought Ross. That’s what we need.

  “You know why.”

  “I do. All too well,” Ross said, rising. “And now for our why. For the Division’s why. Care for a beverage? Some tea, perhaps?”

  Thorne looked as if she were about to tell him exactly where he could stick his teacup when she let out a loose sigh. “Got anything stronger?”

  “I do.” Ross slid back the rice-paper panel that hid his small kitchen. “Those creatures, the ones that Jackson attempted to eradicate,” he said, taking a bottle of black rum from the top shelf of a cabinet along with two crystal tumblers. “They were here, under the streets of New Harbor, and practically in the Order of Sormen’s basement.”

  He returned with the bottle and poured healthy measures for both of them. Thorne downed hers at once and held the glass out for more. Ross obliged. She took another, smaller sip. For a moment, she looked as if she were about to set the glass on his Go board but instead thought better of it and cradled it in the crook of her legs.

  Ross swirled his rum, taking a deep sniff of the caramel and coffee aroma before sipping himself. “Do you really think a cabal like that—one right at the black heart of the most powerful university in the world, one that has access to repositories of the most arcane knowledge ever assembled, one that is not only known to study that knowledge but has repeatedly used it to alter the course of human history—do you really believe they didn’t know that those things were down there?”

  “What are you saying? That the Order knew about the creatures and they just . . . what? Didn’t care?”

  “What I’m saying is that I think they knew they were there because they are the ones who put them there. Most people believe that the Order of Sormen is nothing more than an old boys’ network set up by the University a few centuries ago to keep their collective wealth concentrated in a few powerful families.

  “The Division knows that the Order is far more than that. The University didn’t construct the Order. The Order created the University to mask its true agenda. It staked its tent here when this country was still in the cradle, and it has rocked this nation to its own hissing lullaby ever since. The Order is not a few centuries old. It has been with us, playing games with humanity, for millennia.” Ross stopped short of what he would have said next, that millennia might have been an understatement.

  “And I have a feeling, Agent Thorne, that when this game is over, the Order of Sormen will find that they have lost. But only because this time, they have underestimated their opponent,” he said. “And it’s very important to me that my lieutenant is someone who will take great personal satisfaction in watching the Order go down. Perhaps for good.” Ross took another sip, letting it turn into a long pull, the liquor burning sweetly as it slid down his throat. “Are you that person, Agent Thorne?”

  Thorne stared at him with eyes devoid of tears. Ross suspected they’d all been shed long ago. The only thing left now in Thorne’s eyes was a bonfire of hate. “You know I am.”

  Ross nodded and gestured back down to the board. “Black and white may seem simplistic at first. But so do all infinitely complex things. When the game is over, only one truth remains. There is you”—he held up a single black stone—“and there is the opposition.”

  He gestured open-palmed to a bowl full of white stones. “They are all the same color when you look at it that way. That is the only
fairness I have ever known.” It was an admission Ross had made to so few people that he could have counted them with one hand in his pocket. And of those people, all but Thorne were now dead.

  “Okay,” Thorne said. “You’ve seen all my skeletons. You’ve made them dance for you. Now, you tell me, Agent Ross, why do you want to see the Order of Sormen in flames?”

  “I have my own reasons,” he said. And he could tell she knew that was something he would not reveal.

  Thorne swirled her own tumbler, the liquor dripping down the walls in thick legs. “Gosling’s rum, huh? Would have pegged you for more of the Napoleon brandy type.”

  “I am the Earl Grey tea type, truth told. The rum is something I only take out on very special occasions. I’ve had that bottle for a very long time. Like the game, I only share it with those I feel are worthy. It was a gift, in fact.”

  “A gift,” Thorne said before downing what was left. “From whom?”

  “From Jack Jackson.”

  Before Thorne could respond, Ross held up a hand. He could hear another set of footsteps mounting his front stairs. He was not expecting visitors. “Enter,” he called before the second knock landed.

  The door opened, and standing there was a harried young agent. Sands was her name, one of the many new replacements. In her hands, she cupped a satellite phone, holding it as far away from her as if it were a uranium brick. “Agent Ross,” she said, “It’s for you.”

  “Is it Sector?”

  “No, sir—I mean, Agent Ross, sir. I mean—”

  Ross waved her off. This was not the time for a lesson in his personal protocols. “If it isn’t Sector, then it can wait.”

  Sands hovered in the doorway like a puppy about to piss the linoleum. “I really think you need to take this.”

  Ross sighed and plucked the phone from Sands’s waiting grasp. She looked more than pleased to be rid of it. “You can go,” he said to her, then lifted the receiver to his ear. “This is Ross.”

  The call lasted less than thirty seconds. And when it was over, Ross knew the game had changed once again, this time forever.

  Thirty-Five

  ELIZABETH, NEW JERSEY

  Jack sat on the motel’s concrete veranda. Perched on the edge of a molded patio chair. The sun was just now breaking the horizon line of the city. Smoke rose in long columns from a field of chemical treatment plants not far away. Looking at those silver stacks, Jack wished that he had a cigarette. He’d never been a smoker, not even in his daylight life. But here, after all that had happened, a cigarette seemed right. It wasn’t as if picking up the habit was going to kill him now. He was long past that.

  They’d decided to stay at the motel for longer than he would have liked. It was a concession to Beth, a chance for them to play house for a short time—scratch that, not play house. It was a chance for them to play home. And while it wasn’t a lakeside cabin, and while they ate stale bagels instead of pain au chocolat, it was the only home he’d known in more than a decade. And all too soon, it would be time to say good-bye.

  He turned his gaze to the weed-choked lot. Parked there was the second busted-up Honda Civic he and Beth had boosted in as many days. This one was a flaking sky blue, its only companion a rusting Nissan pickup of about the same vintage. Jack could see the heap of empty beer cans littering the truck’s bed even from a hundred yards away.

  Jack knew that the Civic probably wouldn’t leave that spot until it was towed away for scrap. Neither he nor Beth would sit behind the wheel again, and the owner would probably just as soon collect the insurance money. Like him, the car was nothing but a husk that had reached the end of any useful life.

  She’d said she loved him. He’d believed her. How could he not? Love was not something Beth Becker used like a cudgel. She didn’t batter people into submission with it. She respected love for its fragility, and she protected her own love for that same reason—he knew that much, at least. Something deep inside made him wonder if she’d ever spoken those words—I love you—to another person the way she’d spoken them to him.

  Her love had arrived filtered through so many twists, turns, and flat-out dead ends—all of them of his own construction—that by the time it reached his heart, it surprised him as much as any of the horrors he’d faced. In fact, it scared him. He’d tried to convince himself that none of that mattered. That he was loved, and that was enough. That with that love by his side, he could face anything.

  Perhaps it was inevitable. As inevitable as the tide that turns stalwart cliffs to sand. She’d changed him at his core, as radically as those things had done all those years ago. Or perhaps she’d simply rescued what was still human. Perhaps she’d simply held out a hand and pulled him back into the daylight world. It was her gift to him.

  And how, now, was he going to repay that gift? he wondered.

  Jack coughed. It was slight, just a tickle in his chest. He looked down at the burner cell phone still clutched in his hand. The number he’d dialed was fresh on the LCD screen. Jack gripped the phone so tightly he could feel the shell cracking. And he hoped he hadn’t just made the second-biggest mistake of his life.

  He wondered what Sarah would have thought of it all, of what he and Beth now shared. And he knew instantly that she would want him to be happy. And that meant he’d probably betrayed her twice. He’d betrayed the only two women he’d ever loved—and who’d ever loved him.

  And soon all of this, everything he’d worked for for so long, would come to an end, not in a blinding flash of destruction but in the quiet ending that so many of us reach at the end of the story.

  He heard the hard whoosh of metal over nylon bushings. A blast of cool conditioned air hit him as the door to the veranda opened. Beth stood wrapped in a scratchy motel bathrobe. Her hair was mussed, her eyes heavy with sleep—and she had never looked more beautiful.

  “Why don’t you come back to bed?” she asked.

  He wanted to turn away but was unable to keep his eyes off her. Who knew when the next time would come when he’d be able to see her like this? Who knew when the next time would come when they could play home? “I don’t think so.”

  “Is it Blood?” she asked.

  They had yet to make an attempt at her promised search, and he knew that weighed on her. “No,” he offered as meek reassurance.

  She took a seat beside him in the other patio chair. “I could make us some coffee.”

  “We won’t have time.”

  She shifted closer, gathering her robe around her. In her eyes, fear awakened. “What do you mean, we won’t have time?”

  Jack simply turned his gaze back to the industrial wasteland that was Elizabeth, New Jersey. He couldn’t face her. Not now. He thought he’d have the strength when the time came. He was wrong. “You should get dressed. We’re about to have company.”

  She had opened her mouth, questions ready to spill, when the thrum of a helicopter rotor sliced the silence, the roar of engines and the squeal of tires joining an instant later. Below them, three black Lincolns pulled into the parking lot, blocking both the Civic and the pickup. The helicopter banked, pivoting toward them, blasting the veranda with its downdraft.

  And as Beth rushed back into the motel room—slamming and latching the door behind her—Jack no longer wondered if this was the second-worst mistake of his life, only prayed that it would be worth it.

  Thirty-Six

  NEW HARBOR, CONNECTICUT

  From the helicopter window Beth could see the jutting middle finger of the University’s most recognizable landmark, Drakewell Tower. The upper reaches of its wedding-cake spire were wreathed in low-hanging clouds. Beth shook her head. Hard to believe that in the time it took to get a pizza delivered, she could go from a cheap motel in New Jersey to the city she thought she’d bid a final farewell to a lifetime ago.

  But there it was, that blasted tower and the University it stood as a stark emblem for. And spread out beneath them radiated New Harbor itself, creeping to the shoreline like a l
eprous sore.

  Jack sat across from her on the opposite bench. She’d barely been able to meet his gaze since the four Division agents had manhandled them into the chopper. Those same agents flanked them both as they flew, their unwelcome bulk crushing her like a wine press.

  At least they hadn’t subjected either her or Jack to the indignity of handcuffs or zip ties. But what would have been the point? What escape plan could she possibly have mustered? Was she going to shove past the human heap of an agent who sat between her and the helicopter door and get a running start? Maybe blow them all a kiss as she plummeted to her death?

  As it was, Jack, their ultimate quarry, had surrendered willingly and dragged her along with him, for her own good. She could have punched him for saying that—for shouting it through the window after she’d locked him out on the veranda and barricaded herself inside the room. It wasn’t until the Division agents had busted through the door that she’d finally given in. She and Jack hadn’t shared one word since.

  Jack’s eyes were fixed on the chopper’s floor. It seemed as if ten tons of guilt hung from his neck. And right then, Beth would have said that he deserved every single ounce of it.

  The agent sitting next to her popped another pistachio into his gaping maw. He flicked the empty shells from his thumb. He’d been doing the same thing for the entire ride. Letting those shells pool around Jack’s feet. “Should have kept that dog on a leash.”

  Jack looked up. His burden forgotten for the moment, his eyes gleamed like well-honed steel. “What did you say?”

  “You heard me, fuck-o. Should have kept that dog on a leash. Then I wouldn’t have had to put a bullet in it.”

  “You—” Beth blurted out before she could stop herself. She’d kept her lips vise-tight since they’d abducted her, but this was too much to bear. “You killed Blood?”

  The agent let out a guffawing stage laugh, throwing his head back and opening his mouth so wide Beth could count his fillings. “That’s what you named it? Blood? Some sense of humor you two clowns got.”