“And now I am,” he said coolly. “I hope he’s proud.” He stood there looking at her, his hands in his pockets, as if he had nothing else to say.
Behind Marley, Antonio muttered, “He is doing something—”
His assistant said, “The system isn’t responding. Compromised—”
She didn’t feel like she was breathing right. “Did you come here to infect others? I don’t believe that. They’re all talking about how you’re basically a walking bomb, and they’re trying not to shoot you but they really—”
“And they brought you in for that purpose. They think I’m here to kill them and they threw you between them and me so they wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences themselves. That makes me wish I was here for exactly the reason they believe.”
“I would have inserted myself,” admitted Marley, moving closer. His eyes widened and she realized his shoulders were taut with tension.
“I wish—” he said hoarsely.
“I know,” she said. She thought about what he’d said, what he’d done. He hadn’t gone to the gala level, hadn’t pushed his way deeper into the corporate level. Whatever he was doing there didn’t involve spreading his virus, didn’t involve any kind of horrible acts of terrorism.
Maybe he’d just come to see if they would shoot him. Maybe he’d come to see if they cared.
That was sweet but Marley didn’t think it was true. It might have been why he warned his grandfather, but he’d been working on something all along, not just sulking over how his family had misused him.
The lights flickered and Corbin glanced up at them.
On the headset, Titanone said, “I don’t…” and trailed off.
“I talked to the virus,” began Marley. “It told me some things. It told me about Skadi. And it told me about you. Do you know why it didn’t kill you, and why Skadi couldn’t cure it?”
“No,” he said, distracted by the flickering lights. “I doubt she tried very hard.”
“Ignore the lights. It’s just Titanone playing around. Corbin—the virus is celestial. Kin to whatever you’ve already got in you. It’s related to your own intrinsic magic. Skadi couldn’t cure you for the same reason that you’re alive and functional. Somehow they’re the same kind of thing.” She moved close enough to put her hand on his chest and he jerked and looked at her face.
“Stay away,” he said quietly.
“No,” she said. “No, not anymore. Listen to me, Corbin. Your own magic, whatever you inherited from your father, that’s what’s holding onto the virus. They wanted you to find out information, right?”
“Sometimes,” he whispered, “If I’m willing to lose myself, it feels like I could know anything. But it’s a lie. When I look too deep, it takes me away. Some secrets cost too much. I become something else. And I’m still trying to clean up the consequences.”
Marley’s fingers clenched in his shirt. “You found out how to block my magic. You could find out how to cure yourself. You could find out what you are. The answers are inside you.”
“I don’t—” He stopped, his eyes widening. “Anything could happen. I can’t get any closer without going away, Marley. And I’ve fought so hard to stay.”
Marley exhaled. “All right. I don’t care. We can go away somewhere, away from all the others, until we find a different cure. Or maybe you’re never cured. I don’t care.”
His eyes widened and then narrowed. “What about Zachariah and the twins?”
She was quiet a moment. “I’ve been stuck on my own magic lately. On what I inherited from my birth mother. On how it defined me. I wouldn’t tell my real mother, and I should have. Because she knows that what we’re truly defined by is what we hold on to even when it’s hard. I thought loving somebody meant it would be easy. I thought because it wasn’t easy that I didn’t know what I wanted. But it’s not about whether or not it’s easy. It’s about whether it’s worth the trouble.” She searched his face. “I’m holding on to you. And you’re worth it.”
“You care for them, too. I know you do.” He frowned, as if genuinely puzzled.
She shrugged and ran her hands up his chest to rest on his face. “Love is complicated and sticky and painful.”
His jaw tightened. “I love you,” he said roughly.
Then his eyes flickered closed and he changed. At first it was just as she’d seen him change in the past. One eye became a black pit while the other glowed blue. This she’d seen before: he stood at the edge of an ocean, the surf rolling over his feet. He never liked going into this state but he did and would, for an authority he couldn’t access on his own.
But the change grew. His shadow, and the other shadows too, birthed ravens. The birds pulled themselves free of clinging darkness, shaking out their wings. The reception area grew claustrophobic as the space filled with black shapes. The dusty scent of the grave drifted on a cold breeze and Marley started feeling decidedly odd herself. Corbin’s face under her palms wasn’t flesh any longer, but something finer, thinner, older.
Something ancient looked at her with that single blue eye, so cold and far away that she wanted to pull back her hands. It seemed profane to touch Corbin now.
She slid her arms around his neck instead and pressed her forehead against his shoulder, whispering, “Find the cure and come back to me.”
“You’re wrong,” he said. His voice was deep and old, with echoes emerging from the shadows as if they were depths. “You thought you could hold onto him, but you have no idea. I can swallow that which was Corbin as if he were spun from sugar.”
Terror shot down Marley’s spine and she lifted her head. “Virus?” she queried. And she didn’t let go.
“Oh, child. I am the virus’s older brother. When what you call the virus invaded this flesh’s cells I was already here. I’ve been here since my last son drew breath. Your ‘virus’ never had a chance.”
Marley didn’t understand. She knew she might later, if she thought about it and looked in some books, but she also knew in her bones that understanding didn’t matter right now. “Go away. Give Corbin back.”
“Mmm? Eventually, perhaps. I have some things to consider. The world has changed since I last looked at it myself…” His gaze lifted to the walls, focused on something only he could see.
“Now!” said Marley sharply. ‘Eventually’ could mean a decade from now.
“Ah, but child, you wanted me here. You encouraged him to reach for me, to reach past his dams into the deepness.”
“I wanted Corbin to learn how to cure his virus,” protested Marley. “Not for… whatever you are… to wake up.”
“Isn’t it uncomfortable?” said the thing looking at her from Corbin’s eyes without a mote of sympathy. “You thought you knew Corbin, thought you understood his depths. And yet you know nothing.”
The observation burned. Marley spent so much time trying to learn things that Branwyn called her Research Girl. “That’s not true. I may not know much but I know more than nothing.”
The entity curved Corbin’s mouth in a cold smile. “Oh? Then let us play a little game. Show me what you know. Tell me who I am, what I am, and I will let Corbin return to you with his answer. You can be together, at least until he calls on me again.”
How could I possibly guess? It was asking her to guess a name without even having a phone book. Marley’s hands slid down Corbin’s arms. She laced her fingers through his. His hands were as cold as ice and hanging loose. But then they curled around her own. She didn’t know if that was Corbin or that which lived within him.
She gathered her thoughts. It seemed like an impossible task, especially when set against her fear, but hadn’t she thought earlier that she almost understood it? She looked at Corbin’s face: at the black pit where one eye was and the ravens behind him. She thought about the virus, which the ancestral entity claimed as brother: confusing, deceptive, with eyes of red and green.
An answer bubbled to the top of her mind but she hesitated. Did her idea fit with
an Ettoriel and a Hadraniel and an Umbriel?
Then she remembered Simon mentioning that his father was a Japanese storm god.
She remembered Skadi, and the conversation with the virus itself. She remembered mythology from high school and college.
She said, cautiously, “Odin?”
He didn’t respond, with word or expression, but that only made her feel more certain. “And the virus is Loki, I’m sure of it. I don’t know why the two of you are… bits of nephilim biology rather than running around the Backworld, but—” She stopped. “You’re hiding from something. Maybe whatever stole the names from the faeries?”
“I shall not require you to guess what no mortal can know,” said Odin gently. “Well done. I look forward to having you as a mother.” Corbin’s eyes returned to normal abruptly and the blue glow flared around them both before fading.
Marley checked her recoil at Odin’s final words as Corbin sagged toward her. She caught him, lowered him to the ground. “Wait,” he mumbled. “Wait, I know how to work the cure. Give me a moment.” His hands moved, churning the air, then clutching his head. “Let go,” he said feebly. “I have to do—”
Marley let go. Corbin rose to his feet. The ravens still infesting the floor flocked together and the Geometry orbited around him. Then he hopped to the right and left his shadow behind, connected to him by strands of dark webbing.
The shadow writhed and the ravens exploded away from it. Then frost rimed the shadow and it opened red and green eyes.
“Oh, Corbin,” it said, in a smokier version of Corbin’s own voice. “Don’t reject me.”
Corbin hunched his shoulders. “Go away.”
“But we were so good together. Like old times.”
“Bad old times,” said Corbin. Marley wanted to cheer him on, but she kept still in case she broke the spell.
The shadow heaved a sigh. “But you’re all I have, Corbin. If I go, that’s it. Would you do this to me? After all I’ve done for you? Whatever happened to hanging on?”
Corbin knelt down and started scraping away the webbing connecting him to the shadow. “Go away,” he said again. “I’m done with you.” He shook his hands, but the goo lingered.
The shadow smiled. “Maybe with me, but what we’ve done together will last and last.” Corbin shook his head, reached over and tore the shadow apart.
“No!” it said, clutching its throat. “No! No!” The last protest was drawn out, and as it faded away, the magic evaporated and the shadows returned to normal. Corbin slumped to one side. The ravens finished settling on various bits of office furniture, and turned to preening and exploration, unconcerned by Corbin’s collapse.
Back at the security desk, Antonio waved at a raven in the way and cleared his throat. “Is he…?”
Antonio’s assistant said, “The network is still acting strange.”
Marley knelt next to him, observed his breathing, and looked at his aura again. The red glow emanating from his core was gone, and a vast dark injury was sealing over.
“He’s alive. And… cured?” She hesitated. “What happened to Loki?” It didn’t seem likely that Odin would just let Loki be cured out of existence, not when they’d shared the same host for so long. And the shadow’s ‘death’ had been more melodramatic than she expected. She found herself thinking of briar patches, and how tricksters lied.
Corbin made a noise and rolled over, bumping against Marley’s knee. “I need… there was something….” He blinked and shook his head, as if trying to wake up. “I came here to do something. For revenge.”
Marley’s hands tightened. “Still?” she whispered.
His eyes opened and met her own. “That’s why this all started, Marley. Revenge on Hadraniel. I’ve just expanded it a little. Improved it. They wanted Hadraniel at their mercy. I had to provide appropriate bait. And it turns out they’ve got exactly the right bait. They never should have left it lying around, so we’ll—I’ll clean that up, too.”
“I—” Marley stopped as Neath stepped delicately through an outside wall. The big calico cat sauntered past the staircase and stopped to sniff at Corbin’s outflung hand. He lifted it to caress her ears.
“That cat is not supposed to be in here,” said Antonio abruptly. “Not just walking through walls like that. Not tonight.”
Marley stared at Neath. Antonio was right. The magical defenses of Titan One shouldn’t have been able to distinguish between Neath, a celestial construct made by Marley’s angelic mother, and Hadraniel in his own vessel. How had Neath just wandered in? Something was wrong.
Neath walked across Corbin’s chest, stuck her head between Marley’s hand and Corbin’s shoulder, and purred. And once again, Marley thought of the virus she’d called Loki.
The lights went out, even the emergency lights. The hum of the central air system vanished. With no more warning than a purr, the entire building shut down.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Branwyn
After Marley ran from the room with the others, Branwyn leaned her head against the pillar and pushed on Titanone until he had to pay attention to her.
But I want to help. I want to do more than play with colored lights. They call it a laser show but they changed it at the last minute, you know. Titanone was sulky and Branwyn was already tired.
“Just let them run their operation, please. Show me the game you’ve been playing lately instead.”
How about I do both? I think it’s weird how humans can only do one thing at once. You even have two of everything. Two hands but you can only do one thing. Two eyes but you can only look at one thing. I was playing a game where somebody was sneaking along in a building like me. Except not awake. And they forgot to put in all sorts of details. My human body couldn’t get out of this room without getting shot so I spent a lot of time inspecting the model. At one point I could put my hand right through the walls!”
Branwyn listened distractedly, watching the people milling around in the ballroom lobby. Mr. Black had come from the ballroom and placed himself at Antonio’s station. A few other Senyaza folk had drifted out. Some were holding plates, while some were very clearly looking for a fight. Somebody in a particularly shiny suit peeked out the door and called, “Black?” and Mr. Black shook his head. The man in the shiny suit said, “I’ll stall, then.”
Hey! Titanone was suddenly outraged. Corbin is a hacker. He’s trying to hack me. Am I supposed to let him do—
“Titanone?” queried Branwyn, then repeated herself more sharply, focusing her attention on the skyscraper’s Geometry and pushing for attention as she had before. But red was creeping over the golden glow, and where the red went a black crack followed.
Hee hee hee. Oh, yes. It wasn’t Titanone’s ‘voice’. Oh and we have a mortal friend. Hello, mortal friend.
Branwyn clenched her teeth and pulled back to look at the whole system. The third node, the one she’d created to connect Titanone to the Nakotus database, was swollen unevenly. She reached out a spirit hand for it, and recoiled from the heat it radiated. Then she shook her head: the heat was an illusion. This was all an illusion, a mental construct to help her visualize what her magic told her.
She reached for the node again. As soon as she touched it she could see beyond, into the Nakotus system. The vast database didn’t have the smooth looping lines and spheres of Titanone: instead it was made of sharp corners and right angles, lined up in regimented rows and laid out on a vast board. Red and green light flickered across the rectangles and pentagons, while guardians composed of triangles and diamonds moved between the rows, oblivious to the danger.
The red light curled up next to Branwyn in the node, muttering. They have no idea what they’ve done. Branwyn? Yes, Branwyn. Shh, stay asleep, child of steel and ingenuity, while your mortal looks on.
“Wake up,” Branwyn muttered. “This is bad.” She tugged gently on the connections between the three nodes.
The red and green light flickering over the Nakotus board converged on on
e location and the glow engulfed the rectangle. Branwyn glared at it. If she’d paid more attention to what the programmer had done would she have any idea what was there?
La la la, this and that. It’s a shame, but they don’t really deserve better.
Branwyn stopped listening. Something had to be done. She was sure this was Corbin’s virus, somehow adapted and uploaded into the Nakotus system. And if it was, well, the virus had been cured before. She hadn’t decided what to do about the problem Titanone represented and she certainly wasn’t going to let this virus decide for her.
Besides, if Titanone was dangerous, how much more dangerous would an infected Titanone be? And it would probably make Mr. Black very unhappy.
The last thought made Branwyn hesitate. It was tempting… But no. She had an obligation to Titanone. So she looked once again at the whole system until the details settled in the back of her head. The virus was adapted for the Nakotus database, and only leaking into Titanone’s structure from across the join. The first thing to do was to sever the connection.
She did that. It made her hands hurt to reach into the blazing red, like flicking blades across her palms, but other than the pain it was relatively simple—for her—to just disconnect what she’d once connected.
Then Titanone was only connected to its own computerized systems: lighting, elevators, climate control, things like that, and it was those elements that the virus in Titanone was using as a host for now. But it was shifting, changing, uncurling new elements. It was adapting itself to move beyond the electronics and into the spirit of Titanone. It was moving fast, too. She didn’t quite know how to purge it and it was going to finish the job before she could stop it.
“No,” said Branwyn. She reached for the glittering silver connection that served as a central nervous system for Titanone and shut the whole building—the electronics, the glowing Geometric connections, everything—down. The entity that was Titanone went into stasis, deeper than any human sleep, held there by the pressure of her magic. She hoped he wouldn’t have nightmares.
Divinity Circuit (Senyaza Series Book 5) Page 28
