“They’re going to notice if we barrel into that line.”
“That’s why we’re not going to.” She double parks a block back, behind a nondescript gray Altima. “We only need a minute, and this might delay the cops a little while they try to figure out what the hell is going on. I’ll jimmy the lock and we’ll go.”
“No,” Fitz says. He pulls one of the pistols he got from Sam and aims it at her head.
“The hell are you doing?”
“Getting answers. How did you know where to come find me? How did you know about this prom? And who the hell is the guy on the phone?”
“You know that’s not loaded, right? I saw you empty the damn thing into that guy’s head.”
Fitz was kind of hoping she wouldn’t notice that part. “Then I’ll just beat you to death with it.”
“Seriously? You think you can do that?”
“No, but I can delay things enough that the cops show up and we both go into a nice, sturdy holding cell and you don’t get to take me wherever it is your boss wants me taken.”
She chews her lip, thinking about it. The phone in Fitz’s jacket pocket buzzes. He pulls it out to look at the screen.
The text message reads, FOLLOW HER. ANSWERS WHEN YOU ARE SAFE.
“No,” Fitz says. “Answers now. Because I don’t know that I’m ever gonna be safe again, and I’m sure as hell not safe around you people.”
A beat. Then [RETASKING ASSET] appears on the screen.
Amanda jerks in her seat, her head thrown back and arms going rigid like she’s just been hit with a livewire. Her eyes roll into the back of her head and then, just as quickly, the seizure is over. She slumps forward, breathing heavily.
“Fuck, I hate that part,” she says. She unbuckles her seatbelt and kicks the limo’s door open. “You want answers? I’ll give you answers. But we move while I’m doing it. Deal?”
Fitz stares at her, not sure what’s just happened.
“Clock’s ticking,” she says. In the distance, Fitz can hear sirens.
“Yes,” he says, unbuckling his seatbelt and getting out of the limo. She runs over to the Altima, popping the lock with a wireless key she digs out of her pocket. She tosses the shotgun, the bandolier of shells and a single grenade into the backseat. In a few seconds they’re on the road, driving sedately as Santa Monica police cars scream past.
“So, questions,” she says. “Shoot.”
“What the hell happened back there?”
“Ah, that. Huh. Maybe we should back up.” She sticks her hand out for a shake. “Hi, I’m Amanda. I’m a vat-grown clone with a downloaded personality in my brain. How are you?”
Fitz has no idea what to say to that.
MEDEINA STEPS PAST the unconscious Sam. She’d kick her for her weakness, but she’s so far beneath Medeina’s contempt she doesn’t even bother. The Agents have no doubt shown their own incompetence and lost their quarry by now.
She wonders where Bacchus is. She didn’t realize he was going to show up. When Zaphiel told her that others would know about Fitzsimmons, she didn’t expect it would be any of the Olympians. After their own disasters, not long ago, most of them have retreated to whatever hole in the world they’ve been able to carve out for themselves.
She stops at Blake’s headless corpse, kicking a chunk of skull away into the bushes.
“That went well, did it?” she says. “According to plan?” The sarcasm drips from her voice like venom.
The body at her feet shudders. Blood coating the cobblestones pools up like mercury, flowing back toward the ravaged stump of the corpse’s neck. Bits of bone and flesh, gobbets of brain roll from where they lie toward the stump, reassembling the head like some grisly jigsaw puzzle. The piece of skull she kicked aside flies from the bushes to click into place, and in moments, Blake’s head is restored without so much as a hair out of place.
“Ugh. This suit is disgusting,” he says, standing up and pulling his gore-crusted jacket off and dropping it to the ground. “And yes, that did go according to plan.”
“You meant for him to get away?”
“And for him to blow my head off, yes. You don’t really understand people, do you?”
“I am a goddess of the forest.”
“Yes,” he says, “I can tell from your stunning lack of getting it. Forget it. Look, I’ll admit it wasn’t my Plan A. I had hoped he would simply come into the fold. But once I saw how things were playing out I knew that Plan B was the only way to go.”
She cocks an eye at him. “And Plan B required you to have your head explode?”
“More or less. Now he’s going to feel guilty. This body was the only father he’s ever known. What do you think he’s going to do when I show up complete and whole and offering forgiveness?”
“Shoot you in the face again.”
He scowls. “O ye of little faith. No, he’ll be so relieved that I’m alive, he’ll willingly come into the organization.”
Medeina wonders if perhaps he is the one who doesn’t understand mortals. She has seen them at their most downtrodden, and though they may be beaten down, they do not submit easily. Also, this one is not alone.
“Then his friend will shoot you in the face,” she says. She had watched the whole thing from up the hill. She knows that this El Jefe is not her friend; in fact, she’s not quite sure what he is. Or what he wants.
A god, certainly, but he feels... off, somehow. And when she asked him about his pantheon, he laughed and wouldn’t give her a straight answer. Sometimes he calls it the Organization. Sometimes the Bureau. Sometimes the Family.
Whatever his plan, she is useful to him, and, for the moment, he to her. Once that changes in either direction, there will be a battle. Though he commands great resources, she is certain she can take him.
And when that happens, she’ll have the Chronicler to herself. She’s not sure what she wants to do with him. Maybe have him tell her stories to the world, grow her legend. Be something more than an unknown forest goddess. Something great and powerful.
But probably just kill him, so she can parade his head in front of Zaphiel out of spite.
“Ah, yes. Her. I wasn’t planning on her.”
“You know her?”
He looks sheepish for a moment, almost embarrassed. “Yes. But I can handle her. I’m more worried about that overgrown alcoholic in the museum and your former employer. The field is getting crowded.”
“And will become more so once others know what he can do.”
Medeina has heard of Chroniclers, but never met one. Certainly never had one sing her praises. There was one man, several hundred years ago, who she heard wrote about her and her family, but he was merely repeating stories told around campfires.
Unlike those mortals who merely told or wrote down the stories of the gods, a Chronicler held the power of belief. They made Prophecy. The gods could speak through them, and their voices could amplify that message to the world.
The Greeks had their share, and certainly the followers of Yahweh, but they were few and far between. Hundreds, thousands of years ago, the gods appreciated them, spoke through them. Built their pantheons upon them. But then the gods fell victim to their own arrogance and stopped talking. They retreated to their Olympuses, their Valhallas, their Heavens and Hells, and left mankind to fend for itself.
Without a voice to channel, the Chroniclers went mad quickly. Few survived to adulthood, fewer still had children. Eventually they became rarer, more insane.
This Chronicler might be the only one sane enough to actually have a conversation with. That might make him the most valuable person on the planet.
“Which is why we need to secure him quickly,” El Jefe says.
“Do we follow him?” Medeina asks.
“No, I have people on his trail. I have eyes and ears everywhere. Even if he goes to ground, he’ll pop up quickly enough.” He looks up at the villa at the top of the hill. “I think I’d like to see what our Greek friend has to say for himself.”
&
nbsp; “You think he’s still up there?”
“Why wouldn’t he be?” he asks. “He’s a god. You’re all so fucking arrogant.” He heads up the hill, his mouth set in a grim line.
“What of your underling?” she says. Will he kill her? Let her live? She is getting a sense of his priorities, his strategies. She is looking at El Jefe as a hunter looks at game. She doesn’t really care what he chooses, but his answer will be telling.
“Leave her,” he says. “We’ll grab her on the way back. She’ll be useful.”
She notes his answer, a picture beginning to form in her mind. He is not wasteful of resources. A chess player, a strategist. She may not agree with his strategies, but knowing that he is considering his moves before sacrificing a piece is illuminating.
She follows him up the cobblestone road toward the villa and wonders what they will find there.
CHAPTER TEN
“YOU’RE A WHAT now?” Fitz says.
He blinks at her. It’s the only thing he seems able to do. That and say, “You’re a what now?” like a skipped record. Those four words are all he seems to be able to process. And every time she tells him, less and less gets through. It’s like his brain is coated in Teflon. Nothing sticks. He’d thought the day couldn’t possibly get weirder.
Turns out his top end on weird is cyborg clones. Who knew?
Maybe if he asks nice, someone will shoot him and then he won’t constantly find his brain wrapping around weird shit the way a Porsche doing a hundred wraps around a telephone pole.
“I’m going to say this one more time,” Amanda says. “And then if you ask me again, I’m going to punch you. Got that?”
He nods. Nodding is an improvement. He understood those words. Now maybe he’ll start to understand more of them.
“This body is a clone. It was grown in a lab. Everything it knows was downloaded from a central repository.”
“So, are you a real person?”
“Yes. Sort of. It’s just that, well, most of my brain is somewhere else.”
“You’re gonna have to unpack that one a little.”
“This is just meat. Who I am, where I am, that’s someplace else. Part of me has been downloaded to this body. I’ve got a connection to... the rest of me, most of the time. The more of me that’s in here, the better I can handle things when I don’t have a signal.”
“Wait. Is that what happened when you got stupid leaving the museum?”
“Yes,” she says. “The helicopters were jamming the signal. And then when we got into the city and they had to pull back? I got the signal back. There wasn’t a whole lot of me in this body before now. So when the signal went out, it had to rely on itself.”
“Did a pretty piss poor job of that.”
She shrugs. “Yeah. But I can only put so much of my consciousness into a body at a time. Too much and things start to break down.”
“Break down how?”
She sniffles, wipes her nose with the back of her hand, leaving a thin smear of blood. “Like that. I’m going to have to dump some of my consciousness in a little bit and I may not be able to answer your questions directly. But I’ll make sure this body is aware enough of what’s going on. It’s complicated.”
“How long do you have?”
“A while. Most of a day, if I really push it.”
“And the cell phone? Is that you, too?”
“Yes,” she says. “Have you ever heard of an avatar?”
“Like the movie?”
“Uh, not quite. It’s from a Sanskrit word. Means the manifestation of a god on Earth.”
He hasn’t gotten any god vibe off of her, but then, as Bacchus showed him, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. “Okay. So you’re a god?”
“No. I mean... probably not? Look, I’ve never had to explain this to anybody before. My point is that an avatar is sort of an extension of a god into the mortal world.”
“So, Bacchus and Medeina, they’re avatars?”
“No. They’re the real deal.”
“I’m lost.”
Amanda sighs. “Okay, look. Here’s what I know. And it’s sketchy at best. About fifty years ago, the gods got kicked out of their homes. I don’t know who by, though it looks like it was Yahweh.”
Fitz shrugs. “Okay.”
“Jehovah? Elohim? El Shaddai?”
“Nope. Nothin’.”
“God.”
“Like God-god?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Huh. Okay.”
“You with me?” Amanda says.
“Yeah, I got it. Big God kicks out all the little gods. I’m good.” A memory from Bacchus floats to the surface through all of the noise lingering in his mind. A fall from somewhere. Olympus? Was that what he had seen? He tries to focus on it, almost has it.
“Perfect,” Amanda says, and Bacchus’ memory swims away from Fitz before he can grab hold of it. “So the gods and goddesses got kicked to the curb, but the father gods, like Yahweh, Odin, Zeus, they all disappeared.”
“What? Just up and left? To where?”
“Seems that way. And I don’t know. Don’t think any of the gods know, either. Anyway, they’ve been trying to get back to their homes since then, but they’ve all been closed off. They’re not crazy about being here.” Fitz can understand that. He’s been evicted before. It sucks to have your whole world upended and get tossed out on your ass.
“It’s been fifty years and a bunch of gods can’t figure out how to get back home?” This doesn’t make sense to him. They’re gods, right? They can do anything.
“Even gods have limitations. There are rules they have to operate by. And some of them aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. Powerful does not necessarily equate to smart. Otherwise we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? Bacchus is fucking scary, sure, but he can only do so much. Also, all of their homes have been destroyed.”
“Wait, what?” And to think Fitz was starting to believe he might keep up.
“Somebody got up to Heaven a few years back and destroyed the Throne of God, or something. I don’t have a lot of information. Kind of screwed it for everybody. Once that went down, everything else fell apart. The entire immortal planes turned back into void. I think. Like I said, I don’t have a lot of data.”
“Way to bury the lede there,” Fitz says.
“Sorry.”
“Okay. So the gods get kicked out, these ‘father gods’ fuck off to who knows where. Heaven’s destroyed and they want me to tell their stories to the world so, what, more people will believe in them?”
“Exactly that. They live and die off belief. Do you have any idea how many gods humanity has believed in over the centuries? Thousands. And hardly anybody knows about them, anymore. I’m not just talking small gods, here. How many people do you think have ever heard of Enki? Astarte? Bishamon? Enlil? Prajnantaka? Mictlantecuhtli? They’re all here now. All of them. And they’re pissed off and depressed and frantic. They know they can’t go home, and they’re trying to find a way to make Earth more hospitable to them.”
“And that takes believers,” Fitz says.
“That takes believers.”
“Okay. But none of that’s answered my question. Who the fuck are you? You’re an avatar. I get it. But what are you an avatar of?”
“The Internet.”
Fitz tries to process that. Can’t. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
“More of technology in general,” she says, “but thinking of it as the Internet is probably easier. Computers, cell phones, surveillance drones, traffic cameras, websites, all the traffic in between them. That sort of thing.”
“That’s kind of a lot, isn’t it?” Fitz says. It sounds enormous, and he’s having a hard time wrapping his brain around it. And she says she’s not a god? And if she’s not a god, then what does that say about Bacchus? About Medeina? Even after getting their histories shoved into his brain, he’s only now getting a sense of scale.
“It is,” she says
. “And the brain in these bodies can only hold so much of it, so I have to be careful how much agency I give them. If I overload a brain, the body burns out. Just up and dies. Deploying another one takes time. So I try not to load it up with too much.”
“Can’t you just, I dunno, dump stuff in and pull it back?”
“Sure. But uploading or downloading too much data at one go takes time. And it creates memory gaps. And sometimes personality problems.”
“Personality problems how?”
“One of them went on a four-state killing spree before I could get her back under control,” she says.
“Okay, yeah, that’s a problem.”
“Usually it’s more annoying than dangerous,” she says. “Imagine knowing that you know something, but not being able to recall it right away. That’s a limitation of brains. Meat’s a really inefficient way to function. Easier just to make up a new personality and some memories. That’s what I did with the last Amanda.”
Fitz is feeling a little sick as he tries to comprehend what she’s telling him. The person who rescued him earlier today, who took a bullet in the street in front of him, she wasn’t real. Well, not real in any sense he really understands.
“She didn’t know any of what was going on other than she was supposed to rescue me from Zaphiel,” he says.
“Right. That’s why I communicated with you through the phone. Easier. But now this body’s fully aware of what’s going on. The earlier Amanda didn’t know about Zaphiel, or Medeina or Bacchus.”
“Wait. So there’s more of you? Of course there’s more of you. You’re a clone.”
“More of these bodies. More ‘Amandas.’ There’s only one me.”
“So, when the Maenads hit us downtown? Did you, I mean, did that body die?”
“Yes.” The matter of fact way she says it makes Fitz feel a little nauseous. She seems to sense that and quickly adds, “It didn’t hurt.”
“She took a bunch of bullets. It had to have hurt.”
She looks confused for a second. “Huh. I don’t remember it hurting.”
Medeina was terrifying, if a little sad. There had been a sense of loss in what he got from her. Missing her forests, a world that didn’t exist anymore. Bacchus was a whole other kind of terrifying. Epic indifference. Fitz is still disgusted at the way he manipulated the Maenads. But Amanda feels alien. Like she knows what people do, how they talk, how they move, but not how they work.
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