"Tell my President," Lara managed, as blood streamed down the side of her face, salty in her mouth. "Tell her I love her still."
Frances hollered and struck her again, this time on the shoulder, and Lara's left arm instantly deadened. It was like being gripped by the demon in Pittsburgh; enfolded in a vice of tightening pain and lost control. She grunted and would have toppled, but Frances still held her head up, looking at this squad of executioners. Perhaps she was going to die here tonight. She couldn't open her mouth to speak now anyway. She could just look at them, into Alan's eyes, into Cynthia's, showing them her sincerity.
But she didn't need to speak.
Instead she reached out, into the muddle of crossed wires in the line, as Witzgenstein's puppet-master emotions swung these people through the repressed motions she demanded, and twisted.
She'd never known it was possible. She wouldn't ever have thought of it, except for Crow. The way he had changed was impossible, but each time she'd seen him it had been there. He thought he'd changed his mind, he thought Witzgenstein was good, he'd turned against everything he once believed, and her touch in all that was apparent.
Hidden beneath the screen of her own pain, beneath the mask she put forward for Witzgenstein to see, Lara twisted.
Frances stepped to the side and now Alan stepped forward. His face showed nothing but certainty, as he swung his baton and brought it round to smack sharply off her right forearm. But it wasn't as hard as Frances. The full weight was withheld, and though the pain was terrible, ringing up her bones and into her shoulder, it was less. Her right arm drooped still, falling to dangle beside her left, but inside she cried out her victory. To be a demon and reach out to crush enemies across the line was easy, but to make them turn on each other, and crush themselves so they didn't even know they were doing it, that was the real skill.
Alan sent a kick square into her chest and she snapped backward, bouncing off the floor, but it wasn't rib crushing. There she lay, gasping for breath louder than she needed to, performing for Janine as the others descended.
There they beat her.
Her arms, her legs. Her back. The soles of her feet.
But they didn't strike her head again. They didn't strike her belly. And they didn't strike hard.
She cried out. She spread her arms and they beat them back, but softly. They slapped her face until her cheeks rang but no blood was drawn. Throughout Frances leered down, unaware that Lara was using her own reeling emotions as a lure to reel her in.
"My President, Lara," she said. "Don't forget that. Not yours. You're nobody. You'll be lucky if we let you carry out the shit after this."
They flipped her on her side so they could lash the backs of her thighs, but their blows came more like feather-strokes now. Someone had a cane and they used it, but by then the beating had become a slow-motion pantomime, with each of them taking it in turns to lay the cane across her flesh and pull it fast, grunting with the exertion and leaving no mark behind.
They believed it. Their eyes were Witzgenstein's eyes and their hands were her hands, and they didn't know what they were doing. Lara struggled and the curtains came off her, perhaps torn away, until she was just a naked black woman in the Lincoln Bedroom, being savaged by five white people with weapons, and Frances licked her lips and redoubled her cane-laying, her cane-pulling.
Lara twisted and kept twisting, drawing the threads of their signals on the line closer to her, wrapping them around her hands until she was in there with Witzgenstein, but invisible, sinking in beneath the rage. They didn't see her, didn't feel her; all they knew was the grand show of her pain.
Lara thought back to the boy who'd been lynched when she was just a little girl, that had started her off on her career into the law. As each false blow fell, as Frances luxuriated in her simulated pain, as the others blinked away their sweat and wiped imaginary blood off their sticks, she thought about the reality of what he'd gone through.
He'd truly suffered and truly died, and his killers had truly gotten away with it, and that had destroyed Lara. The panic attacks that followed had broken her, cracking her resolve and leaving her collapsed in the fountain of a law company's lobby, because they'd won.
But not now. With every fake blow, she felt the ice of Amo's touch within grow warmer, and remembered what true faith was, because this was her act of defiance. This was how she turned the world around, using the weapon that had birthed her into this new world. Their fake blows were hammer strikes on a lump of iron on the blacksmith's anvil, beating her into a truer shape.
She screamed and welcomed every soft strike. She gathered up the pain and humiliation and poured it like gasoline onto the warming ice in her middle, because this was to be their forging as much as it was hers, weaving her into their own signals on the line. Nothing would be the same again. Perhaps if the fire grew strong enough then Amo would hear her call in return, and draw strength from her will to survive.
So she made the final twist, and the next blow that landed was a real one, though it was not on her.
Frances struck Alan across the back, as hard as she could, and he screamed, and Frances grunted with wild joy, and while Alan arched his back orgasmically, another blow fell from Cynthia onto Frances, and the scene played itself out again.
SMACK
THUMP
THWACK
They groaned and beat each other. Blood swelled up. She twisted, and they beat each other. It was an orgy of violence and pain. They grunted and leered. It was what Witzgenstein wanted. It was her reward, and Lara could give it to her.
WHACK
SLAP
THUMP
They groaned, and cried out, and bled and pawed at each other's bodies, tearing the clothing and the skin, lost in the throes of passion, believing with every strike that it was Lara they struck.
She twisted the line, and twisted, burrowing in deeper, digging into each of them so she was an underlay beneath Witzgenstein's agitated bridle, learning as she moved, sending tendrils she'd never imagined were possible, and taking control. She let them exhaust themselves, beating until they were spent and on their knees and barely able to lift their arms any more. Frances lay on her side, drooling and moaning into the carpet. Alan lay on his back with his hands on his chest, panting ecstatically, wheezing. Cynthia caressed George's short hair and he nuzzled into her, bleeding from a broken nose.
They didn't know. They were sated, and so Witzgenstein was sated.
And through them, through that, Lara realized that this wasn't the first time. They'd done this before. They did this often. She felt the snaking lines of intimacy throughout the line, reaching between Drake's people and the children, each meeting in tight little nexuses of pain and humiliation, each of them feeding back to feed into Witzgenstein.
Perhaps she didn't even know. On some level she did. Not consciously. This was to be her rule.
Her own head still throbbed, a swelling block of white behind her eye. The first blows still pounded painfully in her arms. She was exhausted from the effort of controlling them, and slowly, shudderingly, managed to get one hand onto her belly.
Her baby was in there. The baby would be scared.
"Shhh," she breathed, stroking the swollen skin, the only part of her that didn't ache. "Little one, shhh."
Perhaps she slept for a time after that. She woke with a large figure standing over her. Her neck rolled, showing him her face.
Crow.
"Are you broken?" he asked.
She only closed her eyes. Both hands now were on her belly, encircling the child, holding it close and letting it know. She had just enough energy to reach out and twist into Crow.
He sensed her. Part of him felt her touch, a glimmer of purple on the line beneath Witzgenstein's red, and he helped hide it. She was there too, moving over him like a net of arteries.
"I think they've only made it worse, here," he said, after a time. "I think Witzgenstein's brought her death in by the front door. Lara."
Lara kneaded at the purple in him, beneath the cover of the bridle, and thought lullabies to her baby on the line. It needed a name, didn't it? She had one ready, her father's name, because she knew now that it would be a boy, and he would be strong.
Ezekiel.
Her father had loved the Bible. He'd read it every day, sitting on their porch after work, thumbing through pages he'd thumbed through a thousand times before. When she'd come home after the first day of school, carrying five thick law books heaped before her, he'd smiled.
"Everything you need to know's in this one book, daughter."
She'd laughed, stumbling up the stairs to the porch. "What about Tort reform?"
He'd laughed at that too, and put his Bible up, and rose to help her because that was the kind of man he was.
Ezekiel, she thought down to the baby. I'm here for you. Can you be here for me? Just a little longer. I'm going to have all this straightened out.
"There's going to be blood, isn't there?" Crow asked. "More than this. All of us complicit."
Lara floated on the heartbeat felt through her hands, felt in her spine and in her sides. This was the real fire, the furnace that would keep her alive and remake her into something new. She sent that feeling out to nourish Crow, and felt him responding. Witzgenstein could see that too, perhaps.
Then Crow's arms slipped underneath her, lifting her gently. She was dimly aware as he carried her away, out of the Lincoln Bedroom and down the hall, into the bedchambers of the new President of the United States. There he lay her down on a cot at the foot of the bed, and departed.
The next thing was a cool cloth at her brow.
"My child," came Witzgenstein's voice. "My poor child, what have they done to you?"
Lara murmured. She let her hands fall from her belly, and crawl weakly up her naked body, to take Witzgenstein's hand. The bridle was already opening up, vulnerable in the intimacy of the bedroom.
"What's this?" Witzgenstein asked.
Lara pulled her hand down. She put her palm over her lips and kissed.
"Ahhh," Witzgenstein murmured softly, caressing Lara's chin. "My child, what have they done to you now?"
INTERLUDE 7
In the air, the world changed as James While's strike teams arrested every SEAL Head, smoothly took charge of their hierarchical command structures, and began an immense global audit.
It was all about trust.
For seven years as the COO of the SEAL he'd been nurturing his own people, building them into the infrastructure of every facility and program, placing them in positions of power, while simultaneously winning them over with his vision, competence and disarming honesty.
They weren't all autistic. Those who were, he knew he could rely upon utterly. He'd taken the time to meet every one of them individually. To them, as to him, the world looked different, and that formed a powerful bond; especially considering who he was.
James While, rock star of the SEAL, globe-hopper, logistical genius, pattern-spotter extraordinaire, and the man with the highest score on a very specific section of the Standard IQ test. He was like them, but he was winning in the 'World of Men'. He had leveraged his inherent skills and fought his way to the top of the social chimneystack that was the largest organization on the Earth.
To them he was a hero. They wanted to be him. His attention and blessing was like manna from heaven, as he elevated them as no one else had. He changed their jobs to match their abilities. He made systems that worked around them, that afforded them success unparalleled anywhere else, built on raw ability. They were a team of thousands with loyalty expressly to him, as he came to represent the grand vision of the SEAL.
For them, that vision lay not in keeping Olan Harrison alive a few years longer, but in actually improving the world. Reducing human suffering, ending famine and disease, stopping war, strife and cruelty. He offered idealistic, unashamed goals just as he was an idealistic, unashamed man, and in doing so earned a cadre of utterly dependable mid-to-high-level managers.
Those amongst his most trusted who weren't autistic all fell upon a spectrum of underachievement. They were men and women who had been overlooked all their lives, quietly brilliant people who'd been run roughshod over by the louder, taller, prettier, more confident cliques. James While picked them out like under-ripe berries, sent them on leadership training courses, found them mentors, and set them up with structures to promote ability over social grace, building a powerful meritocracy in a virtuous, self-improving cycle.
They knew who their guardian angel was. They were grateful to be noticed, and happier than they'd ever been, and came to rely upon him like followers in a cult. To them he was infallible, a machine who was more capable than any manager they'd had, so when the order came down direct from him to take over their departments in his name, they acted as one.
The revolution went smoothly, with little blood shed.
In the Apotheo Net boardroom, situated high in a downtown Kuala Lumpur skyscraper, Head Abe Strick sent two security guards into a shootout that ended with three dead and Strick himself hit in the thigh, but still the Apotheo Net was taken.
In a secret Disarmament nuclear weapons repository in the Kenyan desert there was a brief upset over launch codes, a countdown was instituted, but hammered down with at least a minute left to spare and all the African nuclear caches under While's oversight.
Farthas Gurgen of Vision locked himself into the panic room in the basement of his Mayfair London office, sending out a wild spray of documents and calls for help that James' people intercepted and corralled, before cutting all his hard lines and locking him down.
Everywhere across the SEAL similar stories played out. Rachel Heron was just the first. One after another Heads rolled around the world as James While assumed control. Olan Harrison could no longer be trusted. There was a shadow SEAL running beneath the real one, and shutting it down and tracking it back to its source was his highest priority.
Hours passed in the air as the globe tilted, and by the hour more reports came in claiming Olan Harrison could not be found. While's teams struck all of Olan's standard haunts but turfed out only secretaries and low-level functionaries. None of them confessed to knowing where he was. None admitted to even seeing him in the flesh for months, if not longer.
So James went deeper. He set teams and computer algorithms digging into an exhaustive search of Harrison's digital history, working outward from the last recorded time he was seen in person; five months ago at a gala event in Cambodia raising money for clearing landmines from the Khmer regime. James remembered there'd been a SEAL Heads meeting three days after that, at which Olan had lodged requests for additional funding.
He dived into that.
The Cambodia charity had shifted some fifty thousand dollars between accounts, and he looked for the evidence of it being spent across the group, in landmine disposal robots or schools for amputee children, but found no physical record of such purchases, only a paper trail asserting it had been usefully spent.
Fifty thousand dollars was not much, but there was no explaining its absence. Its connection to a project overseen directly by Olan Harrison made it even more suspicious. Direct charitable giving had always been Harrison's remit, and afforded him a dossier of activity that spread across all sixteen branches of the SEAL.
James While stopped mid-investigation and started redirecting his teams, turning them toward Olan's charitable activities across every department. It didn't take long for the immense scale of the monies involved to become clear.
It was billions of dollars a year. Money disappeared down the charity holes Olan had set up; coming out of the SEAL itself, coming from un-named donors who might be SEAL affiliates or might be anyone seeking to buy influence, coming from governments and corporations who wanted Olan's ear. In South Africa a system of shelters for battered women existed only in name, with the coordinates given for their five centers showing only shacks and slums in the satellite feed. In the Inuit communities of northe
rn Alaska an investment in GM Arctic cod and char that would reproduce three times faster than normal, ensuring rich bounties of food, showed no impact at all on the coastal ecosystems, which was impossible.
The examples flooded in; not just hundreds but thousands of examples of funds reported spent but gone missing. While ordered more arrests. Every member of each charitable section of each department was put into a room and interrogated. The scale of the theft was immense and staggering, exclusively occurring in the areas James While had long considered automated.
Nobody had been checking for the rot creeping in at the root.
Olan hadn't touched any of the new projects. While shiny new investments in the Multicameral Array, Logchain, Apotheo Net hadn't been affected in quite the same way, While began to see the outlines of the false bottom beneath every one. Olan had hidden his network in plain sight, in places While was either not privileged to look into, or in areas he would never think to check.
He'd trusted Olan Harrison, and that had been his flaw. Harrison's roaming responsibility had seemed like another check and balance in the system, not a corrupting influence. In the end it amounted to the simple laundering of money.
Out of the chaos, patterns began to emerge. Some investments were genuine, though seemingly for purposes other than those they'd been reported for. A research facility in the Alps well known for cruelty to animals had been bought out and turned into a seed preservation vault, but there was no physical evidence of seeds ever being shipped there. An investment in water wells across Kenya had been completed, but no villagers went to them and gathered water. Work on mosquito harvesting to denature their reproductive capacity and spread impotence through the population had plainly been carried out; the massive fields full of nets were there, but malaria rates were no lower even in the surrounding area.
It was all bullshit, and James While steamed through it with a growing and unfamiliar sense of anger. He didn't get angry, rarely felt emotions as other people did, but when he did they built up and steamrollered everything else, often taking days to subside. The intense focus he'd for so long prided himself on now seemed to be foolishness. Olan Harrison had used him like a cog in a machine, relying upon that foolishness which he'd pridefully considered outstanding competence.
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