The elevator was smooth and silent, activated by a palm print and retina scan. It was fast enough that my ears popped: agonizing, with the burst eardrum. There were no numbers over the door, just a single amber light that burned during the ascent. We stood in that sterile little room for what felt like half an hour before it slowed, lifting my stomach and dropping it back down in the seconds before the doors opened, and I was escorted into a soaring lobby.
There were no windows here, but there was a lot of glass. Concentric walkways ringed a slender standing stone in the center of the chamber. It was about eight feet tall, a glossy black plinth that stuck out of a circle of carefully groomed river stones. As soon as we passed the threshold, I felt my magical ability depress. The magic in the compact submachine guns my security carried faded into nothingness. The crawling embers in the metal were gone, even though the engraving was still visible to the naked eye.
“What’s with the rock?” I said, jerking my head toward the plinth.
None of the stormtroopers and neither of the Men replied. The one in the lead opened a waist-high glass gate—also manned by a masked guard—and we started our corkscrew path to the next floor up.
I was admitted into the kind of office seen anywhere in the Financial District. Silver trim, white walls, a very dark lilac carpet that was almost gray, a stylish desk, fake bamboo in a pot. There were six people in the room. Joshua Keen was standing with Tomas the Magical Forensics Guy and one other man I didn’t know. The stranger waited by the end of the desk, arms crossed, seeming generally unimpressed, while Ayashe sat on a chair in front of it. She had her hands fisted on her knees, her face a stiff, polite mask. Almost immediately, she met my eyes, gaze heavy with silent warning, and gave a tiny shake of her head. The other two people were both guards who left as we entered, taking position outside the frosted glass doors.
“He didn’t give you any trouble, I hope?” Agent Keen said. His voice seemed a little more nasal than last time, but he was just as supercilious.
“No, sir.” The MiB to my right said.
“Good. Wait outside.”
“Yes, sir.”
The two Men left, and the room became slightly less oppressive. Slightly. Ayashe’s fingers loosened a little.
“Might as well break the ice,” I said. “ Because I was busy getting a wound packed and I’m very unhappy to be here. What the hell was the rush?”
“You might want to be more polite in professional company, Mister Sokolsky.” Keen angled his head toward me. “Especially given recent developments in the situation you were assigned to—and failed to produce on.”
Jesus. Talk about throwing your hand. “Except that I have produced a result. I’m meeting Soldier 557 tonight.”
The corner of Keen’s eye twitched, the only readable sign of his displeasure. “You mean to tell me that you, in three days, accomplished what an entire agency hasn’t been able to do in months?”
“He came to me,” I said. “Synchronicity, you might say.”
“And what does Soldier 557 look like?” Keen arched a thin eyebrow. “Describe him to me.”
“Short, dark skin, white hair, leprosy,” I said. “I don’t know what he is, exactly, but he’s not human. He’s got the requisite skills, he’s-”
“That is not our man.” Keen’s momentary concern evaporated. He perked right up. “Emmanuel, play the tape.”
The stranger moved off, as mechanically compliant as the Men in Black had been. He switched off the lights, pulled the blinds across the windows, then fiddled with the VCR and projector on the desk. I crossed my arms, hanging away from the group to better see them all at once. Ayashe still looked like she was sweating bullets, like maybe she was up for trial—not a position I’d ever expected to see her in, and one that made me irrationally angry. I didn’t like the way the men surrounded her, like a wall of swords. If anyone was going to kick Ayashe’s ass, it was going to be Jenner or me, not some Nazi Stormtrooper asshole.
The video started up, showing a crisp black and white feed of Judge Harrison’s study. I frowned, suddenly curious.
“You will understand once you see this,” Keen said. “Now watch.”
After a few seconds, a shadow passed across the floor, the silhouette of an opening door that was followed by a person sweeping into the room. They were tall, dressed in a broad-brimmed fedora and long coat, and stopped and turned as Judge Harrison followed them in, his arms open in greeting. Despite the danger, I felt a small rush of excitement. A Man in Black? Maybe I’d been right after all.
The scorn I’d been mustering died on my lips as the guest took his hat off. It was Angkor.
Keen glanced at me, but I was well in game mode by now and my face had settled into a stiff mask. We watched Harrison motion to the seat across from his desk, radiating a kind of manic excitement as he bustled around the room. Angkor accepted the seat with his usual grace. He casually took out and lit a cigarette. We could see his face and the back of Judge Harrison’s head. There was no sound and no color, but Angkor was an expressive conversationalist, gesturing with his hands. The whole time he was speaking, Harrison was, slowly, carefully opening a drawer on his desk. A revolver lay on top of the papers, and as he reached for it, Angkor’s hands moved in what I knew was an arcane gesture.
The gun was forgotten as Harrison clumsily jumped up, knocking his chair over as he staggered to his feet and then fell to his knees. He had his hands pressed over his groin, struggling to get his legs under him again.
“Pause it,” Keen said.
Emmanuel paused the video mid-frame, just as Angkor was getting up to pursue his mark. His face was clearly visible. He looked hard, focused: the face of a professional killer at work.
“So, as you can see, he is neither short, dark, nor leprous,” Keen said brightly. “Which means that you officially have no-”
I laughed, a short, derisive bark. “That isn’t Soldier. That’s Angkor. He hates the Deacon more than you do.”
As one, the four of them looked at me.
“But never mind that,” I said. “I’m finished here, right? So, throw me down the well or burn me at the stake or whatever it is you’re going to do, and get it over with.”
“I told you that’s who he was,” Ayashe said. She sounded like she was fighting the urge to get up and punch this man. “I told you his name is Angkor, and that’s wrapped up with the TVS somehow, but we don’t know how. I subbed the report-”
“I don’t care about one non-human’s report on another,” Keen said. “But the corroboration between your knowledge is interesting enough to delay your detainment. What can you tell us about him?”
“Excuse me? Excuse me?! I am a GOD-damn Federal Agent!” Ayashe got to her feet, and froze as the two men at the door—like automata—pulled sub-compacts from their jackets and aimed them at her.
“You’re an animal who can’t control herself.” Keen was as calm as the eye of a hurricane. “As you just demonstrated. Sit down.”
She stared at the weapons in disbelief. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are-!”
Keen didn’t even reply: he just jerked his head, and the Men in Black opened fire.
Instinct threw me to the ground, and Ayashe as well—but there was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide as the shorter, better equipped Men advanced in the sudden vortex of sound. When my vision cleared, I saw Ayashe on the floor, wheezing and wild-eyed as she bled across the regulation-gray carpet. She had dozens of wounds, holes punched out of her limbs, torso, and even her neck… but she wasn’t dead.
“Take her out,” Keen snapped at them. “Sandbox transit. And make sure she regenerates. The Director will want to review her before processing.”
Processing? I watched numbly as the Agents crossed the floor. Ayashe was still struggling. With wounds that would have instantly killed anyone else, she struggled as they grabbed her arms and dragged her away. She stared at me in desperation, white eyes huge in her dark face. They carried her into the
waiting arms of no fewer than ten guards who had materialized outside the room at the sound of gunfire.
“So.” Keen took his glasses off, wiped flecks of Ayashe’s blood off with a handkerchief, and then set them back on his nose. “What do you know about the man who killed George Harrison, Sokolsky?”
I was still down on one knee on the floor, ears ringing. The blown eardrum that had just started to heal had that fuzzy feeling again, like someone was holding a pillow against that side of my face.
“Well.” I cleared my throat, fighting to not look at the smear of blood leading to the closed door, to ignore the way my heart now rattled behind my ribs. “He’s Korean. He’s a Biomancer, a mage who uses-”
“I’m well aware of what biomancy is. Who does he work for?”
“Not the Deacon. And apparently, not for you. Which leaves another branch of Government, himself, or…”
“Or?”
Or he goes around calling himself ‘Zealot’ and working for a guy named Norgay, I thought. “I don’t know. I thought he worked for you.”
“That isn’t very helpful, Mister Sokolsky.”
“Angkor was careful never to tell us anything about himself,” I said. “But what I do know is that he isn’t Soldier 557. And I can hand you the Deacon and Soldier, together, tonight—but I have to be at the meeting.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Keen replied stiffly.
“Except it is,” I said. “Because he didn’t give me a time.”
“I’m not following.”
“The right time for him to arrive is the time I’m there. If I’m not there, it’s not the right time. He’s a Chronomancer. I wasn’t joking when I said the meeting was an act of synchronicity.”
“Fucking warlocks.” Emmanuel was churlish, fatigue written into his voice and the lines of his face. “Can’t you just meet up like normal people?”
“We wouldn’t be mages if we did,” I replied.
“How convenient for you this is the case,” Keen said. “And where, exactly, will we be escorting you?”
“You won’t be ‘escorting’ me anywhere,” I said, thinking quickly. “Because he won’t come if you do. You’ll let us meet and set up around us. Then you can take him out.”
“Where?”
I snorted. “Why on Earth do you think I’d tell you that?”
“We can rip it from your mind if we have to, Mister Sokolsky.” Keen looked down his nose at me. “You seem to believe you still have a choice.”
“By the time you get someone in with enough power to mine a Phitometrist of my ability for information, the Deacon will have sensed the disruption in the magic he’s worked to arrange this meeting,” I replied. “And that’s it. He’ll vanish. And given that he’s mixed up in the chase for Lee Harrison, you really, really don’t want him to vanish, am I correct?”
It was a reach on my part, but the way that Keen’s already tense face sharpened, and the way that Tomas and Emmanuel both slammed the shades on their expressions was enough to tell me that I’d found the right button to push. I also knew that, by pushing it, I’d guaranteed my execution. Unlike Ayashe, I couldn’t take twenty rounds and live—but unlike Ayashe, I hadn’t believed them capable of humanity to begin with.
My eyes hooded as I got to my feet. “You’re wrong. I do have choice. You need me capable of deciding when I’m going to go see the Deacon.”
Keen shook his head, and I froze as the MiB leveled their weapons at me. When I felt back for my magic, it simply wasn’t there—not with whatever suppression it was they had on this place.
“We have Lee. And you are missing a key element to this,” Keen said. “But you seem to fancy that you’re a clever man, so let me ask you a question—do you know what cordyceps unilateralis is?”
“Cordyceps is a family of fungus,” I replied quickly. “They’re famous because of their ability to parasitize and control insects.”
“Correct,” Keen replied. “Much in the way that a demon has parasitized you. Or more accurately, what used to be ‘you’. That is what demons do, as according to their nature. They parasitize human beings and turn them into vehicles, zombies so perfect that they maintain an illusion of humanity where there is none. There is, in fact, no ‘Alexi Sokolsky’ left in that hollowed out core where you may have once had a soul. Whatever it was that happened to you when you were young allowed a malevolent entity to seize control. It replaced that child with itself.”
I stared at him. “You’re nuts.”
“You grew up into a warlock. Into a cold-blooded, unrepentant murderer without a conscience.” Keen cocked his head. “A career criminal, a murderer, a thief, a liar, and now a Faustian deal-broker. Which is exactly what one would expect of someone who was possessed by a monster, wouldn’t you say?”
“You’re nuts,” I repeated. “My abilities, my mysticism… they were completely unrelated to all of those things. I didn’t have any choice growing up in the family I did, in the circumstances I did-”
Soldiers were massing at the door. Keen just smiled. “No, you didn’t. And that is my point. Deus Vult, Mister Sokolsky—I’ll get the Deacon eventually. On my terms. Not yours.”
Chapter 26
The last thing I remember before blacking out was being pinned down by a team of guards, so many of them that I couldn’t breathe. When I stirred out of the drug fugue, my IV was gone, my clothes were gone, and I was somewhere that smelled like rotting garbage. The cell was basically a metal box with bars on one side cemented into a pit in the ground. No bench, no bed, no toilet—I had a five-gallon bucket that had been sawn down to three gallons and a small stack of cheap, office-grade toilet paper. Everything was welded and locked together tight, and without tools, there was no hope of escape. All there was to do was listen.
Piercing female screams rang out periodically from somewhere deep within the building: the kind of raw-throated shrieks you usually heard from a woman during childbirth. It might have been Ayashe—it might not. My brain was scalpels and static, everything whirling and cutting, crackling and snapping. From behind the cold iron bars of my cell, I could hear unseen guards talking in between the sounds of torture. Their voices were quiet, but the gaps in their audible words were filled in by the synesthetic patterns that beat a tattoo in my mouth.
“Jeez she... out. Can’t take much more of... surely,” I heard one say.
“You’d be surprised.”
“I am. Whatever she’s got, they want it real bad.”
“Don’t think they’re going for info, man.”
“Speaking of screaming my head off: it’s true. They’re already stiffing guys their pay over in the Icebox. The brass says we ‘eat too much’.”
“Well, no shit. They expect men to be on their feet ten hours in the fucking tundra-” whatever he said next was cut off by the next scream. “- cutting corners. It’s already biting them in the ass.”
“Yeah, it’s fucking ridiculous. They should put in more of those milkhead freaks if they want soldiers that don’t eat anything. Speaking of them… that ‘thrope they brought in been rendered yet?”
“Nah. I heard Cruz say something about needing one of the big digester trucks for her, like the ones they use for dinosaurs and shit, but I’m about ninety percent sure I saw them stick her on a helicopter to the Sandbox.”
“I thought we had a big truck?”
“We did.” The guard dropped his voice further, enough that I had to put my ear against the bars. “Like I said, all this bullshit with cutting corners is bad news. The truck’s missing.”
“Missing?” The other man hissed in disbelief. “Who the fuck let it out of their sight?”
“Must have been those older milkheads, because no one was fired that I know of.”
“That is a grade-A fuckup. I dunno… can you like… undigest ‘thropes? Maybe some of their friends took it to try and turn them back.”
“Doesn’t work like that. Not unless they come back like that Slimer thing from Ghostbus
ters, right?”
I listened to them chuckle in growing horror, thinking back to the heavily enchanted cement mixing truck at the funeral home. That had to be the ‘digester’ truck they were talking about. The ‘milkheads’ had to be the Men in Black, with their white blood. The Men dissolved into slime that left no residue, and that slime… was made from shapeshifters?
My stomach churned, and my head swooped dizzily as I crouched back on my heels and rubbed my face. The woman’s screams continued as the guards’ talk turned to football and gossip. Then, suddenly, they cut. The men who’d been chatting, trying to drown out the heart-rending pain in those cries, once again turned silent and professional. One of them checked in on his radio, while the other swept past my cell and looked inside. His face was masked, eyes shielded behind a reflective visor. After a second of scrutiny, he moved away.
There was another cry from somewhere not too far away—this time, a sound of rage. Both the guards in my corridor looked up, one immediately onto the radio. “459 to X-Ray, welfare check on Zone 3-6-”
He was cut off by the sound of a door being kicked in. The pair turned and opened fire with silenced weapons, still loud in the confined quarters of the tunnel-like corridor. Three bursts, as they advanced and covered each other—and then a yell and an explosion that sucked the air into the hall and popped my eardrums. The pain in my injured ear was like a stab to the side of the head. Wincing, I clamored forward against the bars of my cage, trying to see what the hell was going on.
Hell turned out to be a shirtless, bruised, bleeding woman who gunned down the men on the floor with the precision of an experienced hunter as she stalked out into the corridor. Her expression was blank with concentration, and she had blood all over her face and throat. Stocky, tanned, short-haired and square-faced, I recognized her immediately.
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