Fiddleback Trilogy 3 - Evil Triumphant

  "Coyote, we need to determine where Build-more is doing its work for Pygmalion." Jytte headed toward the door of the office. "I will get right on that."

  "No, Jytte, we can get Sinclair to get us that information. He has to still have contacts in Build-more."

  She stopped and pulled off her watch cap, releasing a flood of golden hair that half-hid her face. "Chances are excellent that Sin's sources are either ignorant or will report his inquiries to Darius. This is not because Darius assumes we know something about his secret project — and I wonder if he knows what it is himself — but because Darius wants to know what his son's area of interest is so he can control him. Darius has likely also heard that you are back and, therefore, will perceive anything his son does as an action motivated by you."

  Jytte's concise analysis surprised me, not because of its thorough nature, because I expected that from her. What stunned me was her precise insights into Darius MacNeal's character. Before, I might have expected her to cite instances where Darius had made moves to curtail and control his son's life without drawing the conclusion concerning the man's desire to dominate Sinclair. Now, without an example, she picked out his motivation and made her point quite eloquently.

  "I concur. How will you get the information we need?"

  She smiled confidently. "Even if he had been paid in advance, Darius MacNeal would not pay cash for anything on the project. He and his people will be using credit. His workers will be using credit. Some of them will also be calling family members here in Phoenix. By hitting the phone company records and credit card company records, I can pinpoint the area where his workers are spending their money. Rental car mileage records can give me an approximate radius of travel from that point. Delivery company records, like United Parcel Express, can track and perhaps zero in on a location.

  "Once I have the area, I can tap into LANDSAT photographs of the area and compare those with more recent photo-recon of the targeted region. I could even work a back-channel deal with the Ukraine Satellite Maintenance Ministry to have one of their old spy satellites make a pass over the area. As much as this base is supposed to be a secret, its construction is going to leave a large footprint. I will find it."

  As Jytte spoke, I heard an animation and determination in her voice where I had only heard mechanical precision before. She had once used computers and her skill with them to create a safe haven for herself. She did what we had asked of her because it meant that we would leave her alone while providing her with all she needed to survive. Her work was her way of appeasing the people who insulated her from the outside world.

  She had changed, and changed radically. She reacted to the challenge of locating the base like a tiger smelling blood on the hunt. She wanted the base's location because it was another place connected with Pygmalion. I could not tell if she wanted to avenge the dead we found at the Pulliam estate, or if she was out to get a direct shot at Pygmalion herself, but it made no difference. Instead of doing things because she had been assigned them to do, Jytte had defined her task and now eagerly looked to leap into it.

  I gave her a respectful nod. "I have no doubt your strategy will work. Go to it."

  She nodded and headed out. As the door closed behind her, I turned to Crowley. "We'll have to do another scouting run on this facility."

  The occultist nodded. "Agreed. Since we know it's in Nevada, we could even head up there early and be in position when Jytte finalizes the location. Depending how things set up, we should not have any trouble learning the nature of the facilities in place for transferring troops over from Pygmalion's home dimension."

  I frowned, an irritating fact about the assault on Turquoise bringing itself to my conscious attention. "With Turquoise, you said that Pygmalion had Ryuhito's troops tunnel out to a dimensional gate, then get sent through. Do you think he will have the same setup maintained for this base? Will he insulate himself that way?"

  Crowley's left hand strayed to his goatee. "Interesting point, and one that we need to answer. I would assume that if he has insulated himself that way, the gate out would still be within the same cluster as his home base.

  That means our plan for bringing Fiddleback in could still work."

  "Provided the conditions on the other side of the gate are suitable to our existence." I sighed. "If Pygmalion outsmarts us and used an inhospitable proto-dimension as his staging area, he wins because our ambush falls prey to where-ever he has chosen to stage his attack."

  "A strategy worthy of a Dark Lord, yes, but is Pygmalion that cautious? He was human until not long ago."

  I smiled. "I'm human, and I thought of it."

  "Yes, but you were trained in the ways of death and warfare — it makes sense for you to think of that sort of thing." Crowley stared at me for a second, then smiled grimly. "Still, your point is well taken. We will have to penetrate the base and see if we can confirm the location on the other side of the gates."

  "I concur."

  Crowley tugged at the heel of the glove on his left hand. "And that means we'll have to bring Mickey with us."

  I wanted to ask him if he was insane, but the matter of fact way in which he spoke made me think before I reacted. Mickey had spent what must have been an eternity in Pygmalion's home dimension. He would know it, and could confirm for us that the place connected to the base Build-more was constructing was Pygmalion's stronghold — much as Jytte had managed to do on our recent recon of the Pulliam estate, it was the right choice, the logical choice, but part of me rebelled at the idea of bringing a 5-year-old child back to the place where he had been traumatized.

  "Wouldn't a videotape suffice? Couldn't he identify it in another way?"

  "Coyote, it might be a scent or the way the breeze feels on his skin that identifies it for him. We can't capture that on video." Crowley took a deep breath and exhaled it slowly. "I know that bringing Mickey creates all sorts of risks on a quiet insertion, but he's a good boy. He'll do what we ask him."

  I returned to the day I'd asked if Mickey could be trained to kill again. Hal's resistance to my suggestion, and my surprised reaction to Bat's indifference to Mickey's age again hammered at me. I had never seen anyone who could do what Mickey could, so I could think of few threats on our mission that could harm him. Yet even if I could have guaranteed no chance of injury to him, I would still be reluctant to bring him with us. I felt as though the only way I could make up for the abuse he had suffered at Pygmalion's hands was to make sure he never suffered again.

  Even with that as my goal, I knew it had been my plan that had gotten his father killed. "Damon, he's an orphan."

  "But he is the only one who can make the correct identification for us. Ryuhito is out of commission and will remain so until and unless we have no choice but to bring him into the fight." Crowley chewed his lower lip. "I also don't believe Mickey knows he is without any parents."

  "No one has told him?!"

  "Who would? Rajani is the only logical candidate, and she is dealing with the death of her own father. No one else would have taken the initiative and a few, like Bat, would have been specifically ordered not to do the job." The occultist inclined his head in my direction. "He has to be told."

  "And you think it is up to me?" I shivered. "I never knew I had parents, Crowley. I was raised in the GalBro Headquarters with my only human contact coming in the form of tutors and trainers. I knew no one well enough to call him a friend. From birth, from before birth, Fiddleback made me into an assassin who could kill coldly and efficiently. How can I explain to Mickey about the loss of his father when I cannot even begin to fathom what that will do to him?"

  "Fiddleback wanted to make you an emotionless drone, but he couldn't. Emotionlessness demands a lack of passion, a lack of pride in your work. A hunter cannot be without emotions. They are there, Coyote, and you can tap them. You have, in realizing you hate your former master enough to rebel against him, and in realizing the debt you owed to your predecessor. You have accepted Coyote's crusade to oppo
se the Dark Lords and prosecute it with a fierce loyalty to humanity." Crowley nodded at me. "You can find it in yourself to explain things to Mickey and, I think, you need to do so to finally gain back the last piece of your soul that Fiddleback still owns."

  Something in Crowley's words burrowed deep into me and began to twist in my guts. As he spoke, I sensed the location of the piece he had seen missing. I desperately wanted to fill that void, but I could not. I realized he was right — telling Mickey about his father would heal that wound, shrink that abscess in my soul. I did not know how it would accomplish that end, but I just knew it would.

  I looked up at him. "How is it that you are so closed to others, yet you can see into our hearts so easily?"

  "Perhaps it is just anti-matter knowing matter, or shadow knowing light." Crowley shrugged easily. "It makes no difference, does it, really?"

  His smile grew as I shook my head. "I thought not," he said quietly as he headed for the door. "I'll send Mickey up. Good luck to you both."

  Mickey arrived dressed in a white T-shirt that showed Heidi Stiletto, the buxom songstress of the rock group Hell's Belles, giving everyone a good look at the trident tattoo on her right cheek. A pair of gym shorts completed his ensemble, and I suspected he got both articles of clothing from or in imitation of Bat. The short-sleeved shirt and short pants hid little of the carbon-fiber armor beneath his flesh, making him look like a man-zebra with twisted curls replacing orderly stripes. His hair had been combed into place by his fingers, but enough of it stuck out in odd directions that I suspected he had been sleeping when Crowley sent him to me.

  As unusual as he looked in his borrowed clothes and decorated flesh, the expression on his face was one of childish innocence and even happy anticipation. I realized as I watched him walk across the carpeted floor and half-leap on to the end of the couch, he felt proud to have been called into my presence. I could feel it radiating off him like pure sunlight burning through the blue sky above the Frozen Shade. He had no idea why he had been called to see me. He was just happy, and I was going to destroy that happiness.

  "Good evening, Mickey. I hope you will forgive me for waking you."

  He nodded his head emphatically up and down, then grinned. "S'okay. I like being awake. When I sleep, there are bad dreams sometimes."

  "I'm sure there are." I smiled at him. "I have them as well, sometimes. All we have to do is remember they are dreams and cannot hurt us."

  Another big nod acknowledged my statement.

  How to begin? How can I do this? I stopped my pacing and clasped my hands at the small of my back. "Mickey, the reason I wanted to speak with you here is because I have some news for you. I am afraid it is not good news, it is bad news — no, you didn't do anything wrong — but it may hurt you, inside, and make you sad. That's okay, to be hurt inside. You can cry if you want."

  His look of puzzlement half died as he pressed his lips together and shook his head. "My father said to be brave and not to cry. He said it would upset Dorothy."

  "I see. Then, perhaps, you could cry here, and we will not let it upset Dorothy." His determination to be brave slammed down on the rising fear I sensed in him. He shunted his fear away and concentrated on what I was going to say. Like a good little soldier, he was determined to do what his father had told him to do. "Mickey, your father will not be coming back."

  Anguish shot through the child like lightning and immediately slaved itself to a rising sense of self-doubt in the boy. His mouth dropped open in what would have been a prelude to an outcry, but he held himself back. I could feel the emotional riptide pulling him one way and another, then I found the thing creating it and immediately acted to shield Mickey from his own worst fears.

  "No, Mickey, your father is not going away because of something you did. He would like nothing better than to be here right now. He loves you very much and, were it in his power, he would be here with you. The fact is, though, he cannot."

  "Why?"

  The quavering tone in Mickey's voice told me that his self-doubt had not been vanquished. I dropped down into a squat and rested both of my hands on his right knee. "Mickey, your father knew that in the time you were taken away from him that you were hurt."

  "I am all better."

  "Yes, Mickey, you are better. You had your physical ills healed, and your father was happy for that. He remembered how you were and was very proud of how you managed all alone to go through what healed you. He was proud and he was happy because you became more than he ever hoped you would. But, at the same time, he was sad."

  "Why?"

  "Why?" I hesitated, as faint chords started to resonate through me. I felt outrage at the way Pygmalion had manipulated the boy. His body had been healed and brought forward to adulthood, then changed and modified, yet the boy had not been intellectually made into a man. Pygmalion used Mickey's innocence to manufacture a killing machine that did not have to wrestle with the morality of what it did because it had not matured enough to understand that much of right and wrong.

  I suddenly realized two things. The first was that Fiddleback had manipulated me as much as Pygmalion had Mickey. Fiddleback had just taken longer and been more careful so I never realized that what I knew as existence was not normal. I, too, had been playing games in accepting roles and eliminating targets. I had avoided moral conundrums by holding myself to a different standard: I did what my master asked because that was right in my mind. Mickey had done the same, with Pygmalion using his lack of sophistication as a shortcut to the same ends that Fiddleback had achieved with me through a lifelong program.

  The second thing I discovered in that moment was that the missing piece of me had been compassion. I had never known it, nor had I needed it in my time before Coyote so radically changed my life. Even since the transformation, I had not been compassionate. Any act of kindness I performed had come out of my need to enhance my power base. When, so long ago, I forced Rock Pell to give money to the family that had harbored me after my escape from the Reapers, I had done so to dominate him, not to be kind to them. The job offers for this operation, while generous, had been to further my ends.

  Coyote, my predecessor, had always asked those he helped to "pay forward." He made them look at helping others for totally selfless reasons. He had done the same with all those he had aided. Finally, in order to position me to be able to take down Fiddleback and now Pygmalion, he had committed the ultimate act of compassion and allowed himself to be killed so I could give life to so many others.

  "Mickey, while Pygmalion took away your problems, he also stole your childhood. You may not understand it now, or for years to come, but he took from you something that no one can replace. That made your father sad, and it made him angry. It made him determined to fight so Pygmalion could never do that to anyone else.

  "Your father fought long and hard to stop Pygmalion. Your father helped save many others, but he could not save himself. Still, he hurt Pygmalion. He slowed Pygmalion down."

  Little-boy eyes looked out from the man's face. "He did not stop Pygmalion."

  "He did not. Your father was hurt, badly hurt." I saw puzzlement in Mickey's eyes. "Pygmalion's creatures play rough."

  The boy-man snapped his right arm out faster than a striking snake and withdrew it in an eyeblink. "I can play rough."

  I smothered the part of me that wanted to welcome Mickey as a full ally and shook my head. "I know, but now is not the time to play rough, Mickey. Your father would not have wanted it, nor do I. I do, on the other hand, need your help."

  Mickey looked up expectantly, his eyes bright.

  "Mr. Crowley and I are going to go on a trip. We want to find the place where Pygmalion took you."

  "The bad place."

  "The bad place, yes."

  Mickey nodded. "It is a long way away."

  "I know, but we think we know a shortcut. I need you to tell me if we are right or not, okay?"

  "Yes."

  I gave him an open smile. "Mickey, some people ma
y not understand why we are trying to find Pygmalion. They may try to hurt us."

  "They will play rough."

  "Yes." I looked at him, seeing the killing machine I might have once become, and I shivered. "You can protect yourself, but don't hurt them. Don't break them. Do you understand?"

  He nodded his head solemnly. "My father said I was a big boy now and had to act like one."

  "Good," I said in a convincing tone. Mickey clearly had no idea that big boys play with guns and play plenty rough. As I looked at his naive smile and felt the willingness to please roll off him like the scent of fresh-baked bread filling a kitchen, I had no desire to enlighten him. Pygmalion had stolen his physical youth, and I was not going to antique his spirit.

  I didn't know if that was compassion, but I knew there wasn't a Dark Lord in existence that wouldn't have missed the chance to add to Mickey's misery. I assumed that as long as what I did was the exact opposite of what a Dark Lord would do, I could not be going far wrong.