He had taken the other two members of Zero Team by surprise. One was already sprawled on the floor, and the other he hurled over something that looked like an armored wheelchair which sat at the threshold of the open vault. The chair was occupied: their Honored Guest.
The Corridor A guard was next—Gerritson used the guard’s own momentum to slam his head into the edge of the open vault door, and he collapsed in a heap at the threshold.
Up above, one of the sharpshooters took aim.
Maddy ran toward Gerritson, scrolling through all the possible ways she could disable a battle-trained, adrenaline-pumped officer before a bullet could do the job first.
Seeing the gunman above, Gerritson rolled, and the bullet ricocheted off the vault door. Then in a second Gerritson was moving again. This time he was behind the wheelchair, his legs sprinting as he pushed the wheelchair in an erratic serpentine path toward Corridor A.
A second shot cratered the concrete beside him, but the third shot caught him in the shoulder. Still it did not slow his momentum, or dampen his determination.
“Stop! They’ll kill you!” Maddy yelled, standing in his path—but as he approached, she realized it wasn’t madness or rage in his eyes. It was peace. A calm transcendence funneled into action.
“Out of my way, Maddy! I know what I’m doing!” He knocked her out of his path with the strange wheelchair.
“Stop him!” She couldn’t see Bussard, but recognized his voice. His footsteps clattered down a metal staircase on a catwalk up above.
The Corridor A guard, his head still bleeding, got up, then raised his pistol with the practiced calm he had been trained for, and fired. The bullet whizzed past, inches from Maddy’s ear, and entered the base of Gerritson’s skull, detonating the right side of his head. A spray of blood left a red arc across the mouth of the corridor, and splattered across Maddy’s face.
He was dead before he hit the ground, and the wheelchair careened forward, smashing into the food cart before skidding to a halt.
Maddy reacted with a directed wrath that arrived too late to make a difference. As the corridor guard ran past her, she grabbed his arm and snapped it at the elbow, then jabbed her fist into his epiglottis, so he couldn’t even scream from the pain of the broken arm—only gasp for air as he collapsed to the ground. Now that Maddy’s own adrenaline had shot into the red, she would have gone on decimating the guard for what he had done, had not Bussard’s voice begun to boom in the space around her.
“Stand down, Lieutenant!” He crossed the floor toward her. “I said stand down!”
Maddy forced her arms to her sides. Damage control, she thought. While Bussard did his, she would effect her own. Gerritson was dead. Nothing could be done to change that. Now she had to divorce her mind from the context—belay the emotional imperative, and talk her way out of a court martial. Damage control now. Assess later.
“Yes, sir. Protecting the guest, sir. The guard’s aim could have been off and—”
“Enough!” Bussard turned to one of the recovering members of Zero Team.
“McCall! Get Gerritson out of here. Take him to the loading dock for now. We’ll deal with him after this situation is under control.”
“Yes, sir.” The officer turned briskly and ran off.
“Wait!” shouted Bussard. The officer halted, then turned hesitantly. “You heard my order, McCall?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then carry it out.”
The exchange baffled Maddy, until she realized something. He wasn’t supposed to hear the order. No one in Zero Team was. They had begun their jobs deaf.
“Haas, get the prisoner. Bring him back to his cell.”
“Don’t you mean, guest, sir?”
“Just do it!”
She followed McCall, realizing with a swell of horror that she would have to step over Gerritson’s body to get to the wheelchair. The cement floor was slick with blood and brain tissue. A gurgling sounded bubbled in Gerritson’s throat. Maddy felt herself getting sick, and silently scolded herself. She stepped over the body. All at once Gerritson’s hand shot out and coiled itself around her ankle. She turned to find there was life in his eyes, that seemed to be growing stronger, rather than weaker.
“W-w-wonderful,” bubbled Gerritson’s voice through bloody lips.
“Jesus!” McCall turned to retch on the lunch cart.
Half of Gerritson’s cranium was gone, and still he spoke. “Wonderful, Haas. Wonderful.” But didn’t that gaping fissure above his right eye seem smaller than it had just a moment ago? Maddy thought. Wasn’t his cortex now showing a maze of convolutions where there had been nothing but pulp? And didn’t the blood seem to be soaking back into him, instead of spilling out?
Bussard grabbed her and turned away from the sight. “Secure the prisoner! Now!”
Following orders was suddenly the easiest, most appealing thing to do. Her military training bypassed her conscious mind, and before she knew what she was doing, she was back in the dome, pushing the heavy wheelchair toward the open door of the vault. On her way, she passed the corridor guard, who was flexing his arm absently, as if she had done little more than tweak his funny bone. But she had broken it—she knew she had. Still there was no sign of the damage.
She crossed through the vault’s threshold, into the cubic cell. Only once she was inside the claustrophobic chamber did she dare to look down at the mysterious guest.
The first thing she noticed was the true nature of his conveyance. It was less a wheelchair and more an Iron Maiden. Heavy steel bars came across his arms and legs. A plate molded to conform to his chest covered his whole upper body, and was welded to the chair. And yes, he did have a mask, but it was hardly iron. The alloy was a polished titanium composite, like the vault door. It covered his entire head, and the holes for his eyes, nose and mouth gave him the eerie semblance of a somber jack-o’-lantern. The entire apparatus had a fine seam right down the middle, as if it could be cranked open, but there was no sign of a release or keyhole anywhere. She thought she had never seen anyone quite so helpless.
And then he spoke.
“He was trying to free me,” the voice said, much younger, much gentler than she expected it to sound. “I’m sorry. He meant something to you, didn’t he?”
“I . . . I barely knew him.”
Then she caught his eyes in the small sockets of the face plate. They were piercing gray, and seemed to float before his hidden face, rather than reside within it.
“Don’t torture yourself,” he whispered. “This isn’t your pain to bear.”
The words reached right through her, and her reeling mind came clear. It was as if he had reached into her soul, removed the shrapnel and sutured up the wound left by the day’s nightmare. And then, in a quiet twinkling of revelation, it occurred to her who he was—who he had to be! It was there in his eyes, and in the flush of presence that steeped the room. It was the same atmospheric charged described by those who had stood on the rim of Black Canyon, and watched as Dillon Cole stood on the canyon floor, and shattered the great dam with the mere force of his will. More than four hundred perished in the canyon before the Backwash began, carrying their bodies back up into Lake Mead—but his body was never recovered. Now Maddy knew the reason why. And the reason for this fortress within a fortress.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked.
Silence for a moment, and then a gentle response. “You could scratch my nose.”
And so she reached in through the small breathing hole, and did.
ONCE HAAS WAS ESCORTED out and the vault sealed, General Benjamin Bussard cleared the area of all other personnel. Then, standing alone in Corridor A, he fired a full clip of hollow-tipped bullets into Gerritson’s face until he had no eyes to see, nor mouth to speak; until his body held neither memory nor a glimmer of life. And when he was done, Bussard stood there watching and waiting, to make sure his death took.
3. WINSTON
* * *
TR
ANSCRIPTION EXCERPT, DAY 197. 19:25 HOURS
“I’ve been thinking about the way we fit together. The shards, I mean.”
“I thought you hated each other.”
“Sometimes we do, sometimes we don’t. It’s a complex relationship. There were things we learned at Hearst Castle, when we were doing all that healing. I could set broken bones, and break down tumors, but when there was someone suffering from a virus—nothing. And then Tory—she was better than antibiotics when it came to bacterial infections, but again, no luck on viruses. But when we were in a room together. When we touched someone at the same time, the virus washed clean.”
“And you think that means something?”
“I don’t know. When you mix the colors of the spectrum, you get pure white, right?”
“Or mud—it depends on whether you’re mixing light, or pigment.”
“So which are we?”
TWO TIME ZONES AWAY, Winston Pell dozed during an in-flight movie, into a dream that was no different at thirty-five thousand feet as it had been at sea level. He was sitting in a lavender lounge chair, floating in the air at a dizzying height, and gagging on the sickly sweet smell of some floral perfume. There was a building before him, and standing on the ledge were three figures. A man, woman, and child. They watched impassively as Winston’s floating chair lost buoyancy and he plunged to the earth below.
Winston awoke with a start, and got his bearings. The flight attendants were collecting trash, and final credits were rolling on the in-flight movie. He blinked, trying to clear his eyes—the three figures in his dream had left an afterimage on his fovea. The dim spots in the center of his vision took a few moments to fade along with the residual sensation the dream left behind; the sensation that he needed to do something. The dream always brought with it a piercing call to action, and with no direction. He had no idea what he had to do, only that there was a burning need to do it. So he had hopped on a plane to pay his respects to Michael Lipranski’s father—because if he had to do something, it was as good a thing as any.
Now he peered from his window to see nothing looming outside but unimpressive variations of normal as he descended into Orange County toward John Wayne Airport. The weather pattern in Southern California was back in control. Or out of control, depending on your point of view. There would be no hoarfrost at dawn on the sands of Newport Beach. No inexplicable downpours, or bubbles of sunshine defying the grim blanket of the marine layer. Outside Winston’s plane, the clouds blew untethered, with no memory of Michael Lipranski, the boy who, for a time, had controlled them. His death had set the skies free.
Winston glanced at his watch, and adjusted it three hours back, to noon. Then he reached over and checked his carry-on—a black leather backpack that rested in the seat beside him.
“I’m sorry, but you’ll have to put that back under the seat for landing,” the flight attendant intoned in a practiced voice. It almost sounded recorded, like the White-Zone Nazi, whose voice resounded in every airport in the world.
“I know the drill,” Winston said. He shifted it gently to the ground, as if to slide it under the seat, but when she was gone, he hoisted it back up. He needed the legroom, FAA regulations be damned. The nervous traveler across the aisle threw him an anemic miffed look, as if this baggage infraction could trigger a mid-air collision.
Winston returned his gaze. “You need a shave,” Winston told him.
The man looked away, and mumbled under his breath. “I shaved this morning.”
“Still need one.”
Confused, the man absently passed his hand over his cheek and found stubble that could have been a week old.
Winston grinned. It was a guilty pleasure harassing the people within his sphere of influence. One of the few pleasures he allowed himself lately. Hair growth, nail growth—anything that could grow or regenerate did so when caught within Winston’s field. Such was his unique talent; different, yet somehow connected to the various abilities and effects of the other shards. No doubt there would be several people on today’s flight who would be making unexpected trips to Supercuts this afternoon.
After a bumpy descent, the plane pulled in five minutes late. “Santa Ana condition,” the pilot had said; the periodic wind that brought hot, dry air from the desert, and forced planes to land from the west.
Once in the terminal, Winston suffered the ordeal of a 17-year-old black kid under an assumed name renting a car in a lily-white airport, trying to look as old as his fake ID claimed he was. Thaddeus Stone, 21, a combination of his brother’s name, and his nickname. The clerk handed him the keys, then Winston waited for his luggage to come shuttling down the baggage claim carousel.
As he waited he caught sight of a security guard trying unsuccessfully to roust a clutch of Colists that had camped out like squatters.
“Incredible,” grumbled one of the passengers. “It’s the sixties all over again.” Which was true to an extent—and yet in some ways this was markedly different. Back then it had been a generation that chose to tune in, turn on, and drop out in full view of a gawking silent majority. But this time, there were no generational boundaries. Nor were there racial or socioeconomic boundaries to the phenomenon. People of all walks of life had surrendered themselves to something too large to be called a cult, yet too disorganized to be called a religion. It could only be called a movement. In this case it was a movement that rivaled the motion of the tides in its scope and pervasiveness.
This particular group was a melting pot of various races and ages. There were at least thirty people engaged either in prayer or in accosting travelers as they passed. More security guards were called in. Although Winston usually avoided the many gatherings of self-proclaimed Colists, this time he ventured closer, drawn by the sight of a black man in a wrinkled Armani suit and bare feet. The man had clearly been a professional before walking this strange path. He reminded Winston of his own father, who had died much too young.
“Hello, friend,” the gentleman said, as Winston approached. “Do you know Dillon Cole?”
Winston had to smile at the question. “Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact I do.”
“He died for you.”
“I thought that was Jesus.”
The man grinned, knowingly. “History is a mirror, my friend.”
Winston was sure the man had a pat response for any comment thrown at him. Responses that were paradoxically as obtuse as they were wise. “Buzz off,” Winston told him.
The man grinned like a leprechaun. “I saw the Backwash!” he told Winston. “It was real! I stepped in the flow of the river, and my dead pancreas was reborn. You’re looking at a diabetic who hasn’t needed insulin for a year!” He put an avuncular hand on Winston’s shoulder. “Son,” he said. “Say what you like, but I know I was touched by God.”
“It’s human nature to see divinity in anything greater than oneself,” Winston said, recalling the prophetic words from his troubled past.
“In the coming days, there will be wonders.”
And horrors, thought Winston. A world full of horrors, if Dillon’s dire predictions were true. Winston wondered how much truth had filtered down the chain of rumor to these people. True, the Backwash, for as long as it had lasted, had been a quantifiable “miracle,” but most everything else was subject to distorted word of mouth. How much did any of these people really know? And what would they do if they knew that he was the Winston Pell? Did they even acknowledge that there had been five others beside Dillon Cole, whose souls shimmered with the powerful light of the Scorpion Star?
“What about the others?” Winston dared to ask. “The other great souls, whose powers rivaled Dillon’s?”
“Servants,” said the man dismissively. “Servants only.”
It was a slap in the face, but, thought Winston, a deserved slap. It had been their unbridled hubris that had created this mess to begin with. The brief time he and the others had walked the ways of Gods had set the world teetering off its balance. This man was prime e
vidence of that.
And now, in spite of how hard Dillon had tried to prevent it, he had become a religious icon of the highest order, with the speed of a satellite transmission—not like in the old days where it took generations to spread the word. There was a time when Winston had hated Dillon, until Winston finally came to realize that this destroyer/creator was neither god nor demon. Dillon was, in the end, just like Winston; a kid with no clue how to rein in his own powers, much less handle the affairs of a rapidly failing world. Dillon, who had once been a hated enemy, was now a friend. The only one he had left.
“Dillon brings life from death.”
“So I’ve heard.” Winston couldn’t decide whether talking to this man was mental masturbation or more like picking at a sore. Either way, Winston had had enough. He reached into his pocket to hand the man a dollar, if only to shut him up. The man smiled indulgently, but he wouldn’t take it.
“It’s not your money we want,” the man beamed. “It’s your soul.”
Winston shivered in the hot wind.
AS WINSTON DROVE TOWARD Newport Beach, he could see that the Santa Ana winds had already done their damage this year. They had ripped over the mountains, tearing up over-watered trees in the Stepford-green neighborhoods of Orange County, and sending a barrage of plastic trash barrels rolling in and out of traffic, because the Santa Anas invariably blew in on trash day.
Michael’s beach house was easy to find. It was the one with the big SOLD sign staring across the beach to the Pacific. He heard some noise from the rear of the home and made his way to the alley behind.
He’d expected he’d be paying his respects to Michael’s father, but instead he saw Drew Camden laboring with some boxes toward a U-Haul truck.
Seeing Drew brought back too many memories he’d just as soon forget, so he took his time, and waited before stepping into view. Drew had been Michael’s friend—Winston didn’t know him well. Drew had been their biographer, deep under Michael’s nature-changing influence in some unsettling way. Although Drew was not one of the shards, he was currently the closest thing to an ally.