"I surrender," she cried again, as together her army fell in knotted clumps of bodies like heavy black clouds. She felt the attention of Anna's mind turning her over like a pig on a spit, as dozens of black and white bodies wrapped her in a tissue of onion layers, so the sky and the ground were shut out by black muscle and trailing white skin. There was a fluttering like butterflies wings, as her angels finally heard her cry on the line and realized how thoroughly they'd been betrayed, and then-
There was an almighty jump enforced from above, and in a dizzying flash she was on her knees on the ground. The world opened partially as her cloud of retrogrades peeled back to open a window out, through which she saw snow on the raw shoulders of a far-off splintery mountain range. Cold air burned her lungs, there was ice beneath her knees, and then there was Anna.
Rachel Heron's eyes widened.
Anna hung stationary in the air at a dozen jumps per second, shimmering like a movie screen, her thick black hair bunched around her head like a halo. The power streaming off her was incalculable, and it shut Rachel Heron's mouth and silenced the trembling of her wind-blasted skin. It fizzed out of every pore in Anna's skin; the volatility of a horde of type threes bottled in a single body, heading for an immense and terrible explosion.
Thoughts jolted through Rachel Heron's mind like the carriages of a runaway train. Was this better? This girl had power to put Olan Harrison to shame. With a thought she could re-engineer the world. It was terrifying, heady, unbelievable.
A silence fell.
Anna descended like a body sinking into invisible mud, until she stood on the ice, which melted and re-froze and melted constantly under her feet. She wore a billowing white dress festooned with long trails of white fabric, slit in places so her black skin gleamed through like the dark muscle of the type threes. Her face was swathed in a shimmer of power; highlighting haughty cheekbones, full lips, and arrogant eyes that blazed with rage.
The rage was everywhere around her. It lifted her up, crackling so brightly that Rachel had to look away. So she'd traded a god for a god.
"You surrender," Anna said, in a voice that carried through the minds of every angel there. All knelt now, cocooned within mounds of black and white flesh, their threads pulled, their minds boxed neatly into the cages Olan Harrison had prepared.
"Completely," Rachel Heron said, finding a gap in the line opened wide enough for her to think through. "I came here to surrender. My angels have rebelled against Olan Harrison in the past. I brought them here for you, Anna. They'll fight for you. Take them to the Redoubt and destroy Olan before he enslaves us all."
She held out the threads, two hundred and forty-three remaining, with fifty-seven already dead. What a waste.
Anna surveyed the threads on the line as if they were a handful of pennies, then a hint of concern entered her eyes. "His reins are upon you," she said. "Don't you feel them?"
Then Rachel Heron did. She felt the piece of Olan crouched inside her and watching, the piece that had never let go of her thread, had only lurked and watched.
She tried to eke out a warning but her throat froze and the sensation of the world rapidly receded. She was boxed; her thread in the hands of Olan Harrison. In the last moment before everything erupted, she saw that of course this had always been his plan.
She hadn't manipulated him, but been manipulated. He'd let her come here, and what had she done but carry a bomb into the arms of the enemy? Every thread was a fuse, and Olan had put her exactly where he'd wanted.
"Poor Rachel," came Olan's voice in her mind, carried across the thousands of miles in an instant, a private audience for her in the early fragments of the explosion, as her mind was already erupting. "You never saw."
Then she exploded on the line.
Every angel exploded.
The line burned black as the force of two hundred and forty three souls vented at once, vaporizing the shallow threads of all the type threes, shredding the girl Anna's mind and leaving only whispers and final seconds and regret behind.
Rachel choked awake in the last seconds of her life on the ice, utterly defeated and lying amidst a hundred hundred bodies, the snow falling across her face and freezing her within. She couldn't move because there was no link between her mind and her body now; eradicated by the blast. Everywhere her angels were frozen fast, and the type threes were frozen, and Anna was frozen. She felt the stump of her pulverized thread drawing taut on the line as the uplifting began, and she tried to hold on, tried to scream, but there was no purchase to be had in this body.
All around her angels scrabbled in the same way, desperately trying to cling to their earthly bodies, not realizing they were already dead. One by one they sucked up into the sky, where Olan Harrison would have them all after Lazarus; his marionettes to control in death as in life. He would bring them down as his slaves, imprisoned in boxes according to his whims, and it was all her fault.
She saw Anna rising on the line, her body already lost, the thread severed by the massive blast, and she poured her fear into the crystal vibration of words.
"Please. Please, do something. He'll hurt us forever."
The girl still shone with power. Even with her army dead and her body gone her fury blazed on the line, perhaps even brighter than before, as if death had only set her free.
"It's all right," she said as the line drew her up, drew them all up like a rain played in reverse. "He doesn't know what he's done."
She took Rachel Heron's hand and they rose together.
INTERLUDE 7
Olan Harrison stood on the Redoubt's third floor, at the screens of Rachel Heron's Strategic Governance department with her deputy Arter Rain at his side, still glowing from the success of his destruction of the girl Anna, the eradication of the disloyal angels, and the final disciplining of Rachel Heron.
At the same time, he watched the Last Mayor attempt his pathetic insurgence.
It was laughable. He'd drilled a tunnel beneath the wall, using up half his type threes in the process, and now was sending a steady stream of type ones and twos inside the wall, where they lined up for the five-mile charge to the Redoubt.
Few things made Olan Harrison smile now, but this was one. The futility of it. It was going to take the Last Mayor hours to get his whole army through, and even then it wouldn't be nearly enough. Olan had seven hundred angels left in the Redoubt, all of them devout and devoted, all of them boxed and trained, as well as an old world military base's worth of conventional weapons.
There were dozens of missiles left in the bays. There were twenty autocannon situated on all the access points to the Redoubt. There were drones carrying explosives, and bombs to bleach the line, and rings of hidden landmines, and of course at the center there was Olan himself.
It was almost disappointing.
Rachel Heron had been his masterwork. She'd always been idealistic, though a long time ago she'd let those ideals be swallowed up in ambition. He'd known since she'd raised him via Lazarus that her heart was not with his cause. He'd let her keep her scoop with his pattern on it, waiting for a day like this. Of the hundreds of voices in his mind, all of them had agreed that this course was ordained.
One day she would betray him.
He'd had more than a decade to turn that betrayal to his own ends. Allowing her influence over him to grow was nothing to him; her efforts always so tremulous, only seeking briefer periods in the box for some, more freedom for others. In some ways he'd been disappointed at her meager overtures, surely influenced by her fear. He'd tried to let her see him weaker than he was, and even then she had barely taken the bait.
The mission to James While was his final stroke of genius. Sending her to collect that sad frayed end, as if he still mattered at all, was beautiful. She'd done it, and he'd felt her heart finally crack. After that it was instinctive to let her see him weakened by his sparring bout with the Last Mayor; enough to spur on her great betrayal.
It was the only way to destroy the girl. He'd been watchi
ng her for some time; monitoring the growth of her phenomenal power on the line. For over a year she'd been the greatest threat to him, far more than the Last Mayor, and as such he'd prepared. Decency was her weakness. He'd seen her try to forge treaties with the SEAL many times, despite the cruelties they'd done to her. She wanted always for the least suffering for the most people.
He couldn't defeat her in all-out war. Or, perhaps, he could, but the cost would be immense, and he hadn't become a billionaire by paying costs like everyone else. There was always another way, and the voices gave it to him.
She would listen to a heartfelt surrender. It would allow him to manoeuver terrible weapons into her proximity, but they had to do it unwittingly, or she would see. It was a natural fit for Rachel Heron's tainted heart. Only she could offer a genuine surrender, dropping the shields of her three hundred angels in the girl's presence, and only with the shields down could he trigger the bombs he'd built into them.
His plan had worked like clockwork.
Now the girl was gone, blasted into the line. He would pull her down and make her part of his empire, using her power to fuel his own, reflecting back his victory.
It was truly a heady day, and now the world lay open before him. Only the Last Mayor at the wall was left to kill, and there was no rush to that. His wife would be there in a day, and Olan would welcome her. With the Last Mayor's help, he would make her and her people love him. He'd learnt much from their conversations, and there was so much more to learn. With the Mayor's help, boxed into Olan's mind like a second Little Olan, he would repair all his old mistakes and perfect his mastery of the line. In time he would teach these people to clamor for their own severing.
He envisaged a society where his touch was everything; a cooling balm on their forehead, a safeguarding hand guiding their dreams, a rite of passage for their ascension into his new civilization. Homo Deus.
Godhood was within reach. With the Last Mayor shackled as another voice in his mind, he would not be stopped.
He turned to Arter Rain, one of the earliest immunes pulled down from the line. If Olan remembered correctly, he'd been gored to death by a rhinoceros escaped from Bengal zoo, after the signal went out. A terrible stroke of luck, in the early days after the fall. Now, of course, his mind was a clamor of voices from above, only held together by Olan Harrison's will, boxing the parts of him that would drive him mad.
"He doesn't realize we can simply move the wall," Olan said.
Arter Rain didn't respond. Of course. Olan smiled. It was easy to forget, sometimes. He'd boxed every angel in the Redoubt as soon as Rachel Heron left, in preparation for the war. He trusted them all, but you never knew, and he'd need their strength in the battle to come. Mano a mano against the Last Mayor would be a joyous experience. The man had power, there was no doubt of that, but he was packed full of fault lines to be exploited.
Olan had broken and rebuilt himself along such lines a hundred times. He knew how to engineer the mind of man. The Last Mayor would be no different, when his black eye was plucked out.
He sent the order and Arter Rain moved to the nearest terminal, where he typed a set of codes that moved the wall. Olan watched with mounting pleasure, felt as a steady silencing of the stunted chorus in his mind, while the wall briefly fell. He watched the Last Mayor's expression change as he sensed it.
The static would be gone. The air would be clear. His little figure turned on the screen, and as one his ocean charged across the expanse where it had stood. Perhaps he thought he'd broken it, somehow. Perhaps he believed the girl had achieved something with her death; a vital blow struck.
How much more pleasurable was it when Arter Rain hit a button and the wall re-formed, scarcely a hundred yards inward from where the Last Mayor had gathered his troops. Just far enough to render his tunnel ineffective. Just far enough that they'd have to dig a new one, using up the rest of his type threes, beating down his type twos, and most importantly of all, breaking his resolve a little bit more.
Olan's smile grew, becoming a leer that reflected back in the dark sheen of the monitor, as he imagined the black eye blooming and filling it. That was beautiful. He could go and cut the Last Mayor down right now, but this would be better. Sever him one step at a time. Crack his spirit like a rat in a maze, with the exit always shifting.
By then the Last Barista would be there to see it. Rachel Heron would be back too, walking in a new body with all the pain of heaven screaming in her head, to witness the wages of her betrayal. Only then would he be fulfilled. It took such efforts, such scheming, to achieve true satisfaction. If there was anything the Last Mayor was right about, it was the effort it took to achieve meaning.
His world would have meaning, that he was now certain of. Every person living within it would make it so. Their love was all the meaning he'd need; a mirror to his own greatness, taught to him by the Last Mayor himself. After all was said and done, what else mattered other than the martyr's selfless devotion?
They would all be martyrs for him.
He patted Arter Rain on the shoulder. On the screen the Last Mayor was raging pathetically. If he wanted to, Olan could split the wall into two, breaking the fallen army into halves, or into three, four, a dozen sections. Built of ten type threes since the fall and reinforced with sixty more in the weeks following, it was the most powerful shield in the world.
Nothing could break it. Not the millions that had assaulted it in the heyday of the SEAL's 'immune' response, not the type twos that had clustered to kill him, and not the Last Mayor today. This would be his end. Olan was going to enjoy this. He started down to the Lazarus decks, where even now they were preparing to haul Rachel Heron's thread down from the line. He would put her in a room with James While's corpse and let her scream.
That was something to look forward to. Of such pleasures was meaning made.
21. THE LINE
Anna arced forward as if on another jump, though now she traveled not through space, but memory. She lost track of Rachel Heron in the flight, lost track of herself and the war, until she came down on a black road surrounded by orange desert, holding a small blue backpack in her hands.
She gave a soft snort. Of course. That she had died was no great surprise. That she would arrive here was only to be expected.
She looked around the space, familiar despite the blurring effect of time; a pit stop off I-70 out of Denver, Colorado. On the skyline stood the skyscrapers of that glass and steel city, still shiny only a few months after the fall, with Amo's Pac-Man resplendent on the tallest floors of the Wells Fargo Center. Its mouth was half-closed at this angle, and that was only natural.
She looked down at herself; a five-year-old girl again, dressed in her ragged blue Alice dress, stolen from a mannequin in a costume shop so long ago. Her white leggings were dirty with sweat and asphalt dust, her blue pumps were torn and her right little toe peeked through at the corner.
She remembered the blisters she'd had. Every night it had been a fun routine; easing off the pumps and popping the little bubbles, waiting for the healing to take. While reading stories of brave Alice, she'd lie on whatever kind of bed she chose; on a school bus roof, in a semi-truck trailer, in the middle of the sunbaked road, and wait for the ocean to come.
They always came to her.
But not now, and she understood why. None of the ocean were up here, not since the line was swept clean. They were locked down below.
She walked a little. The desert was a desolate orange. The sky was a sharp cerulean blue, and she knew what day this was. Everything had changed for her here, a crossroads, and nothing could be the same. This was the day the wound in her middle had begun to heal.
A hot wind blew, and she waited as the cream RV pulled up, just as it had before, horn honking and full of the echo of old jubilation. Behind it roared Julio's red muscle car, though he pulled up out of sight, revving occasionally. When the RV's driver side door opened, she knew who it would be.
Jake.
He s
prang out with a gangly, tousle-haired grin, arms spread like he'd just performed a wonderful trick.
"Anna!" he cried, and ran to her. She ran to meet him. His skin was firm beneath her touch. She squeezed him so hard that he laughed.
"I'll pop, sweetheart," he said, patting her head. "You'll squeeze all the red strings right out of me."
She looked up at him without squeezing any less. "I'm so glad to see you. I'm sorry you died."
He laughed and patted her matted, filthy hair. "Don't be silly, little bit. I'm up here now. You don't know what it's like. I'm so happy."
She gazed up at him, feeling the same way she'd felt all those years ago when her father had walked into the water and never come back, when she'd been alone and half-mad.
"How can you be happy?" she asked. "Lucas is below. Your family aren't here, ever since the line was flattened. It's nearly empty."
He smiled. "Not empty, sweetheart. And Lucas will come here too, in time. I'll be here when he comes, or part of me will. As for my family, I think I'll see them again soon. Don't you?" He winked.
She looked past him, to the RV where she could see a ghostly figure sitting behind the windshield glass. It was Masako, her face pale, staring back. She didn't get out of the RV. Anna let Jake out of the hug and stood with her hand in his, looking into Masako's haunted eyes.
"What happened to her?"
Jake gave a small shrug. "She's slow. There's not much of her left, you know? The anger's mostly faded, and I think it's shame that's keeping her here. Maybe you'll help her get over that, when you have the chance."
"I'll do it now," said Anna, then released Jake and started toward the RV.
There was no transition; no walk across the blacktop, no opening of the RV door. With the thought, she was sat in the RV's passenger seat. The sudden jump didn't surprise her, here; instead it felt natural. She looked sideways.
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