Bitter Angels

by C. L. Anderson

  And we had not just one place vacant now, but two. The image flashed through me of Leda and Ceshame crumpled on the deck, the last of their life oozing out with their blood.

  It was too much. I knuckled my eyes and tried to think. I turned to my new Clerks.

  “Could either of you tell me…”

  But neither of them was looking at me. They had both turned to stare up. I tracked their gaze. At first, all I saw was a figure in black, tearing along the upper walkway, dodging the other pedestrians, forcing his way through the crowds, and he glanced down and saw me staring up.

  Hamahd. Hamahd racing across the bridge like a madman.

  “Captain!” he shouted. “Captain!”

  I didn’t know what to do. I was watching an impossibility: a Clerk, my Clerk, in a blind panic. By the time I remembered it was possible to move, the pair behind me were already running ahead, swarming up the ladders, storming across the rapidly clearing bridges. No one wanted to see this. No one wanted to be anywhere near it.

  Hamahd saw them coming. He started backward, away from his own kind.

  He looked down at me standing there gaping up at him. They were almost on him, moving smooth as machines.

  Hamahd stood there for a moment, watching them come on. Then he swung himself over the rail and he jumped, diving headfirst toward me. His coat billowed in the wind as he fell down, arms outstretched, a great black bird diving down on its prey.

  “Hold him!” shouted someone. I leaned out and snatched at the air, and somehow, grabbed his hand. Even in our light gravity, I about wrenched my arm out of its socket, and the rail bashed against my ribs and wobbled—it held. Pain blinded me for an instant, but I hung on.

  “Captain,” Hamahd gasped. “They’re using you.”

  “Hamahd, get up here, have you lost your mind?” The Clerks had changed directions, they were running toward us. I saw them and so did Hamahd.

  “They’re going to use you to finalize the new network.” He curled his free hand around the railing. It was buckling. It was going to give. “Get out. The saints could still get you out.”

  They were almost on us. Hamahd braced his feet against the balcony. I made to haul him up. But he arched his back, yanked his hand free, and fell.

  Light gravity or not, the laws of momentum and the stone beneath were too much for his human body, and his head broke open with a sickening crack. People screamed, then I could move, because it was a dead body down there and suddenly it was my job.

  It was my Clerk.

  I made it down ahead of the two newcomers. I knelt beside Hamahd. His skull had flattened against the street and blood and brains glimmered around him. His hand stretched out, naked and empty in the gory puddle. His eyes fluttered closed, then open, then closed again.

  In the next heartbeat, I was shoved back on my ass and my view was blocked by not just the two new Clerks, but a host of others, ten, perhaps more. They surrounded Hamahd’s body, a living wall of solid black. I heard them murmuring. I saw one, the slim one who had begun following me, lift his head, looking for all the world like a snake taking a scent. He swiveled his head, and his gaze fastened on me.

  He pulled himself free from the dark clot made by his fellows and walked over to me, where I sat in an undignified position on my rump, still too stunned to move. The Clerk held out his long, fine-boned hand. I swallowed. I grabbed it. I let myself be pulled onto my feet.

  I was an inch from him and looking into his eyes. They were fully focused on me, and horribly bright. A human being should not be that awake and alert, that tightly concentrated on every detail in front of them. There was a manic look in those gleaming eyes, for all his face remained utterly expressionless.

  They’re using you…Get out. The saints could still get you out.

  “If you speak a word of this, it will be known,” he said flatly, turning away. Together, the Clerks lifted Hamahd’s broken body and carried him off.

  As they passed, the people turned away, doing their best not to see.

  TWENTY-ONE

  SIRI

  The Luxe towered over Siri like the cup of a gigantic stone flower. Its roof spread out far broader than its foundation and its shadow darkened the streets for several blocks around. It was the remains of excess on a magnificent scale, like the corpse of a great king.

  The pedestrians pushing past her were a mix—not the bottom of Dazzle’s population, but definitely not the top either—and they eyed her uneasily. Siri had worn her uniform and brought her gun, so she stood out more than a little. They didn’t know who she was, or didn’t like who she was, or couldn’t work out how to exploit who she was. The back of Siri’s neck began to itch.

  Good thing we brought the gun.

  “Yeah.”

  If there had ever been doors facing the street, they were long gone. The empty threshold had been crudely enlarged—hacked open, in fact.

  Was that to get something out, or let something in? Siri wondered, running her fingertips over the broken stone.

  “A little of both, I expect.”

  Once past the foyer, the lobby of the Luxe opened out in all directions. The blossom proved to be only the top of an hourglass with walls curving away both above and below. Screens might have once provided the illusion of windows, but now they just sputtered and flickered, giving the place the strobe effect so disconcertingly common in many sections of Dazzle. High above her, Siri glimpsed the black sky and the brilliantly shaded sphere of Reesethree, with Moon-three just coming into view. She looked down a series of sweeping staircases that would have looked at home in Versailles to see the wasted remains of a formal garden. Dead light poles stood sentinel over ancient piles of twigs and brushwood. It was dry as dust. Dry as death.

  Why the hell did Bloom want to meet us here? Siri coughed and tried to breathe shallowly through her nose. If we’re walking into an ambush, Terese is going to kill me.

  “Then she should have been on station to order us to bring backup,” Shawn said, echoing the words Siri had uttered on her way out the base door. She didn’t bother to answer him. She’d also been ordered to follow up with Bloom, and Bloom had asked for a meeting.

  She had to admit she was relieved to get away from her listening post, and the whispering she’d been hearing on the network. It was maddening. It was voices, she was sure it was voices, but she couldn’t focus on them, and what was even more strange, she couldn’t filter them out. No matter what she tried, she still heard them.

  Halfway to the Luxe it seemed as if she could still hear them, whispering under the voices and city noises around her. She’d tried to tell herself it was ridiculous, but the idea wouldn’t leave her.

  The problem was, Shawn heard them, too.

  That didn’t make any sense at all—not to her, not to him—and she felt his confusion snaking out into her mind, which made everything worse.

  A faint pathway had been worn in the dust, and Siri followed it where it led off to the left. The spot between her shoulder blades, right under her weapon, twitched.

  “It’s all right,” said Shawn from the back of her mind, sounding almost normal. “We’re together in this.”

  So why aren’t we together in getting out of this? There’s got to be a way in around the outside. They stopped in front of a silver pillar breached by a pair of doors embossed with the symbols for “Elevator” in about fifty writing systems, all of them shining with a friendly blue light.

  “It’s not so bad. There’s some power, and that elevator’s in working order.”

  Bloom had specified floor 27. Siri glanced around the cavernous ruin. If there was a stairway, she would have to search for it, and probably waste a lot of time, given the scale of the place.

  As if sensing her thought, the elevator doors opened, showing her a blessedly dust-free car. Siri stepped inside. The doors closed. The car shuddered, dropped a sickening half inch, then slowly started to rise. When it ground to a stop, it dropped again, a good half foot this time before it jer
ked back up. The doors opened, and Siri dove out onto the tiled elevator bank.

  A red carpet, flanked by red-velvet ropes as miraculously clean as the elevator car, stretched out in front of her.

  Where’ve I seen this before?

  “If you have, it was before my time.”

  She swung her weapon down around to the ready position and followed the carpet to an arched doorway hung with more red velvet. Siri pushed this aside and instantly recognized the place in front of her.

  It was a theater. An ancient but perfectly maintained proscenium arch stage, complete with heavy velvet curtains and footlights, filled the space in front of her. Painted frescoes soared overhead, and gilded curlicues glistened on scarlet walls. Siri stared as she walked forward but did not take her hand off her weapon.

  “Behold!” cried Bloom’s voice from the darkness. “The greatest of palaces!”

  The footlights flashed, blinding her momentarily. When her vision cleared, Bloom trotted out of the wings and down the stairs.

  “Coordinator Baijahn.” He met her halfway up the aisle and grasped her hands. His own were neatly gloved in white. “Thank you so much for coming.”

  “Glad I could, although…” She gestured at the cavernous space around them. “A bit much, don’t you think?”

  He chuckled and rubbed his hands together. They gleamed very white in the theater’s shadows. “I suppose it might seem that way.” His gaze traveled lovingly across the painted ceiling and down to the stage. “But this was the first space I ever managed and since then I’ve kept it as sort of a pet project.” Bloom paused. “It’s never gone away, the living theater,” he said softly. “Not even with the XPs and the other everyday miracles. We’ve never been able to quite make the human brain believe utterly in electronic illusion, you see. A disconnect, a distance, remains. But when there’s another human involved, the disconnect goes away. With a human, you believe.”

  He looked intently into her eyes as he spoke those last words, and it seemed to Siri he was trying to tell her something or giving her a chance at understanding something. But although she tried to listen, all she heard beneath his words were echoes of the never-ending whispers she’d been tracking since she’d turned her network on.

  Am I going deaf? Am I losing my mind?

  “No. Neither. Something is happening. Something real.”

  Bloom turned to face the stage, but not before she saw his expression fall into disappointment.

  “It is also,” Bloom went on, “the one place on Dazzle where I am the one who controls all the cameras. Thus, we can talk here without the Clerks’ interference.” He gestured toward the rows of velvet-upholstered chairs, indicating she should sit. Siri looked at the nearest seat, thought about how long it would take her to get out of the thing if she had to, and opted for just leaning against the arm.

  Bloom shrugged. “I never intended to be speaking with you about this. I thought I would finally find a way to use my skills to regain something of my former position and power. But, when Dazzle fell, she took us all with her.” His expression hardened. “They had no right to do as they did. No right.”

  Is he talking about the OBs or the Blood Family?

  “Maybe both.”

  “When you left us, and your superior stayed, I understood that something was changing, something major, or your people never would have bothered to leave a Guardian with us. So I started doing a little investigating on my own.” He gazed modestly down at his fingertips. “I am still allowed to travel as freely as any of us are, for my work. It means I can see and hear a fair amount if I put my mind to it.”

  He paused again, waiting for her to deliver some compliment. “Something else you excel at, I’m sure,” she said. Oh God, has he been to Hospital? Has he seen Bianca there?

  His gesture was noncommittal, but Siri had the odd feeling he thought that she could have done better than that, but her heart was in her mouth. It was all she could do to keep quiet and keep listening.

  The whispers seemed to gather close around Bloom.

  “What I saw was that the Clerks were spending an inordinate amount of time traveling back and forth to Hospital.”

  “Hospital?” Her voice was tight and strained. He had to know by now something was up with her. But she couldn’t say anything. She didn’t dare.

  Bloom nodded. “It was terribly strange. Hospital is its own sealed system. Its Clerks are almost a separate branch of the Security. I thought at first it might just be some kind of new audit. But soon I realized it was something much more than that.”

  A spasm of pain shot up Siri’s arm. It was only then she realized how tightly she’d been clutching the chair arm. “What did you find?” Bianca. I knew it. I knew it…

  Bloom’s gaze slid sideways. Siri bit down to stifle a scream. The whispers seemed to grow louder, almost becoming intelligible, as if they were trying to tell her something.

  Or tell Bloom something.

  “Have you heard anything about the Clerks’ network?” he asked.

  It was as if the floor had dropped out from under her and Siri had to struggle to respond. “We’ve been hearing rumors of something new…”

  “They’re not rumors,” said Bloom. “It’s real, and it’s vast.”

  “All right. All right. Not what we hoped for, but we’ve got to follow up.”

  “So what is the new network? How does it function?”

  “I don’t know,” Bloom admitted, anger plain in his voice and on his face. “I’ve tried to find out. I’ve given it everything I’ve got, and believe me, my tech is as good as you can get, in this system anyway. I still don’t know. What I do know is that it has something to do with direct connections between human beings, with the sharing of knowledge, mind to mind.”

  “You’re talking about telepathy,” said Siri. “Automated telepathy?”

  But Bloom shook his head slowly. “Oh no, something far more obscene than that.” His voice trembled with emotion. “I’m talking about the Clerks’ victims. All the ones they’ve killed or made to disappear.”

  “What?” cried Siri, starting to her feet.

  “What?”

  “It’s been a rumor for years,” Bloom said. “That the Clerks have developed a way of…sucking the person out of a person. Siphoning, they call it. They distill the spirit, the essence, the voice, the you. They secure it in their network, trapping their victims, turning them into nothing but voices streaming back and forth through the ether from Clerk to Clerk.”

  “Impossible,” Siri said, but her voice had no force. What about the whispers? The whispers in the network. “Ridiculous.”

  “I knew it,” said Shawn. “I knew they were voices. I can still hear them. It’s not illusion.”

  Stop.

  But Shawn didn’t stop. “Voices,” he said again. “I was right. Siri, you hear them too. You hear them through me.”

  Shawn, stop it, please. It’s impossible. It’s got to be.

  “Back and forth, back and forth. All those voices,” said Bloom, his voice low, almost singsong. “The lost, the trapped, the enslaved. This is what they do in their secret wing on Hospital.”

  Siri struggled to breathe, to think. But that endless whispering just on the edge of hearing filled her mind. She wasn’t imagining it. It was real, she could feel it resonating in the bones of her ears.

  “Yes. That’s it. That’s got to be it. We have been hearing Bianca. They’ve got her trapped in there. If we could pin it down, find the frequency, we could break it open, let her out…”

  “Stop it. Slow down!”

  Bloom’s eyebrows lifted. “I’m sorry, Coordinator?”

  “Sorry.” Siri shook her head. Fortunately, Shawn had subsided and she could focus on the man in front of her. “It’s a lot to take in.”

  “I know, and I’ve had years. But…you do believe me?”

  “I believe him, Siri. It makes perfect sense.”

  “I don’t know,” she said to Bloom, and to Shaw
n. “You haven’t given me much proof.”

  “But you feel it. I know you do.”

  “I don’t know,” she said again, but the words were weak.

  “Will you at least promise me you’ll look into it?” Bloom reached out and took her hand. “I can’t do anything outside of this space. They’re watching me. They’re watching all of us. Everyone thinks the cameras are in the cleaning drones, but I think they’ve really set the essences, the voices, to watch us.”

  “I will do what I can.” Siri rubbed her forehead. Shawn was restless in the back of her mind, almost as if he wanted to break out of her skull and fly free, looking for the voices on the wind.

  After all, what was Shawn but a voice in her head?

  “Thank you.” Bloom released her hand. He smiled, wistful and tired. “We probably shouldn’t prolong this. They’ll be watching us both now. I’ll show you out.”

  He took her down the elevator. Walking through the mausoleum of grandeur was excruciating. Siri breathed in the dust and thought about the voices, the essences, trapped and transmitted across whatever frequency the Clerks had claimed for themselves.

  It can’t be possible. It can’t be true.

  “I don’t want it to be, but I feel it.”

  I know. But…how?

  “That’s what we need to find out, Siri. If they’ve trapped Bianca’s essence somehow…”

  She was so lost in her inner conversation, she almost failed to realize that they had reached the main doors.

  “Thank you for listening to me, Siri.” Natio Bloom pressed her hand once more. “I hope we will be able to speak again soon. But I urge you to take care. The Clerks are not to be trifled with, even, I think, by the Pax Solaris.”

  Siri nodded and turned away, walking down the base streets, into the flickering shadows.

  When Siri Baijahn was out of sight, Bloom returned to the theater. He mounted the stage slowly, stepping on the pair of switches that killed the vibrations running beneath the floor.