7

Outside Fisher University Library

Li’l Ed sat on a bench, staring at the untouched bioplastic container of Synapsate next to him, still in the spot he’d set it over half an hour ago. The family dinner had been in progress for the last twenty minutes or so via EI, but so far it had been silent except for a few preliminary greetings and the prayer.

“What will you do now, Li’l Ed?” his father asked finally.

“I don’t know, sir,” he said quietly. “The school situation seems to be in limbo at the moment. I’m sure everyone is waiting for some sign from everyone else, and then there will be a collective decision about us.”

“I think the most likely collective decision is that you and Jack will Depart,” his stepmother Nolene said.

“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid you’re right. But if I turn myself in for voluntary reconditioning now, I’ll lose my place at Fisher. It would be highly unlikely for McGuillian to put any additional resources into me after that. I’d be reconditioned and Accepted, but I’d be at the very bottom rung of the company, probably for my entire career. I would like to attend for just a while longer, to see how it all plays out. I promise that at the first sign that the wind has shifted and they’ve turned against me, I’ll apply immediately for voluntary reconditioning. I have a completed application form pre-saved, and I keep the site permanently open in my EI.”

“It’s a serious and unreasonable risk, Li’l Ed,” his father said. “We can’t condone that.”

“It’s so much to give up if I don’t need to, sir. I worked so hard to get into Fisher Academy and take my place on the executive track. Life at the bottom of the organization is barely life at all, and I think I’d rather risk Departing, if I have even the smallest chance of staying at Fisher.” He paused, then took a different tack. “What if the Lord’s plan for me was to stay on track, to pass this test of my determination?”

“Li’l Ed, I’m surprised at you,” his father said. “You are old enough to understand that the Lord and McGuillian are the same. It’s fine to envision them as separate entities as long as you don’t try to put them at odds, but it’s time to grow up, son. The company is from whom all blessings flow. Your clothes, your food, your home, your health; everything about you is a gift from McGuillian. The company is our provider, and it alone judges our worth.”

Li’l Ed sat without speaking, unable to respond. Finally, he cleared his throat. “Yes, sir.”

“The risk is unacceptable, Li’l Ed,” his father said. “There’s nothing more dangerous than Departing; it’s the endgame scenario every time. Any life at McGuillian is better than no life at all. You will surrender yourself for voluntary reconditioning.”

Li’l Ed felt his stress melt away. It had been decided. His father outranked him at the company, and the company was God. His father’s word was law.

“Yes, sir. I should probably let you get back to your work sir, and ma’am.”

His EI suddenly slammed off! They would think he’d terminated the connection before they’d given him leave! Li’l Ed scrambled to reopen the function but found he was unable.

A black truck pulled up directly in front of him. The doors opened and two Unnamed stepped out. Jack was inside, wide-eyed and pale. “Get in,” one of the Unnamed said.

Someplace dark and underground

“Yes, go ahead, one more!” Rus screamed. “Another!”

He was seated naked on bare concrete with his arms and legs bound around an oil drum. The hooded Fiends called Divinators were working him over. There was a plastic bag over his head that sucked against his face when he inhaled too fast, and the electrical cord whipping across his back made him involuntarily gasp and gag.

It didn’t matter what they did to him. He deserved all the pain, desperation, and suffering the Fiends could administer. Let them torture him to the end. There was no life worth having in a world like this, anyway.

A hand roughly grabbed at his head, pulling the plastic off his face as it closed into a fist. It yanked him backward, pointing his face at the ceiling as his lungs tried to suck in the whole room’s air supply.

A hooded face appeared above his, but Rus’ unfocused eyes stared blankly into the space between them. The vomit-stinking breath stung his eyes.

“What are you?” a voice growled.

“Nothing,” Rus said, meaning it. “I’m nothing.”

The hand released his hair and the muscles that had tightened to counterbalance his tilted head flexed, slamming his nose and brow ridge against the oil drum.

“This one’s ready,” the voice said.

At a Hotel

Arrulfo said this was a hotel. Ernesto had never been to a hotel before. A hotel was a sour-smelling building with concave stairs and too many people in it. And noise, too much noise. Ernesto did not like the hotel.

“Arrulfo, let me take him instead,” Rosa said. “He needs to learn to be apart from you.”

Rosa took Ernesto’s hand. He yanked it back away from her, holding the lighter close against his chest. “You see?” she said. “You see what he does? You protect him so much he’s overwhelmed by everything.”

Arrulfo appeared, smiling at Ernesto from a close distance. “It’s okay, amigo,” Arrulfo said. “Don’t worry. It’s me. I’m here.” Arrulfo turned his face away again. “He is overwhelmed by everything, Rosa, and so, I protect him so much.” Then the face was back in front of Ernesto, saying, “Let’s go down the hall together to try and get some gas for the lighter, okay?”

Ernesto nodded. Arrulfo stepped back. Ernesto liked that Arrulfo didn’t offer to help him up. People sometimes put their hands on Ernesto and thought they were helping, but that was terrible; it was not helping at all. Arrulfo never did that.

They went out into the hallway together. It smelled like ashes and rain. It was too narrow to walk next to each other. Arrulfo went first and Ernesto followed, seven and one-half steps from the door, to the closet where there was a toilet. There was still some gas in the lighter from before. That part had not been broken in the fight, the part holding the gas. So little gas was left that the lighter might not light for Arrulfo’s friend with his big hair in a tube, but Arrulfo said maybe they could get some from this toilet.

Ernesto worked the tube and crank, trying to get some gas out of the pipe he could access through the toilet. The little piece on the tip had a membrane that let only gas pass through it and not water and the membrane had not been broken. He couldn’t get the tube to where he wanted it because there was something inside the pipe that was blocking it. Ernesto found a tiny pocket and turned the crank, meeting resistance as the membrane kept out water, but finally a tiny bubble formed inside the lighter’s internal tubing and then slowly worked its way to mix with the rest of the gas inside.

“You got it?” Arrulfo asked. Ernesto nodded. “Okay, good, amigo. Maybe you can give it to Kel, maybe practice talking to someone new, huh?”

Ernesto shook his head like he did when he was tasting something bad. He pushed the lighter into Arrulfo’s hands, but Arrulfo didn’t take it. “You can give it to him,” he said as they walked the seven and a half steps back to the room.

Arrulfo talked with the new girl, Eadie, and had Ernesto show her the lighter and its gas level. “I don’t want to give it to him, Arrulfo,” Ernesto said. “You do it.”

“She can give it to him, Ernesto. Just give it to her. It’s good practice for you.”

She took the lighter and said something to him in English. Ernesto went back and sat down. Now there was nothing to fix, nothing to do. People were talking and making too much noise.

Outside the door a voice yelled, “It’s Dok! I’m coming in!”

Rosa opened the door and three people came in, slamming the door again behind them. Rosa worked the big metal rod through the loops and the door shook with some tremendous impact. Others ran to push against the door.

So loud!

Some huge noise sounded outside, painful and shocking. One of the people here, Lawrence, pulled an arm away from the door, dripping blood onto the floor.

Now the loud sounds were everywhere, and especially coming from the window. Guns. The sounds were guns. Someone was shooting guns. Sometimes the sounds were different from each other and sometimes they were the same, but all the sounds were much too loud, painful and shocking. Ernesto covered his head with his arms.

Arrulfo grabbed him.

“I don’t like to be touched, Arrulfo!” Ernesto said, pulling back.

“We have to go now, Ernesto,” Arrulfo said. “We have to run from the bad men.”

Arrulfo had taught Ernesto to run from bad men. Bad men would hurt him unless he ran away from them. The change was so hard to do, as if he was tied up and trying to stand on his own, but Ernesto forced his arm and leg muscles to work, and he made himself stand. Arrulfo released him and he went into the hall with the others.

There were dead men there in the hall he had to climb over. They wore black suits and sunglasses. The word for the people who wore black suits and sunglasses was Sinnombres. Arrulfo said Sinnombres were bad men, but he only knew some of them, not all of them. These two Sinnombres were dead, which was what happened when their bodies stopped working and they went away to leave the bodies behind. Bad people did bad things, and these Sinnombres weren’t doing anything bad; they were just lying there, or gone. These Sinnombres were not bad men. There was also a dead one who had no black suit or sunglasses. He had a little glass vial on a string around his neck. Those were called Demonios. Arrulfo said Demonios were bad men, too, but he didn’t know all the Demonios. This one wasn’t doing anything bad. He was just lying there, dead.

Coach V’s Clinic

A few days ago, Wanda had become Coach V’s “girl,” and the Saved had assassinated the Directorate. Since then Wanda had been subjected to Coach’s cruel punishments, and the Saved had converted a quarter of the Horde’s members. The Horde had withdrawn, and now the clinic was a strategic asset for the Saved.

The job was just as she’d been told it would be. She was a slave, with every task, movement, and even thought, controlled and prescribed. The only rest she got was during lectures from Coach that were part of her “training,” but even then she had to sit on edge, listening. Coach took so many bactrostimulants that her words came fast and often through a clenched jaw, and the punishments for failing to register and recall what she said were severe.

Coach didn’t seem ever to sleep, and the schedule she kept her girls on already had Wanda begging, literally, on her knees, for pills of her own. The begging was Coach’s idea. “Once you’ve become what I want you to be, then you get speed to lock it in place,” Coach had said every time so far. “Keep begging for now. Keep trying to prove you’re fine-tuned enough for me to rev you up.” Quickly, desperately, and for perhaps the thousandth time today, Wanda forced her thinking back to the task at hand. She was with Sula in the sealed, windowless room Coach used as a lab, mixing up a suspension of blood and other fluids to sterilize for the production of bacteria. Nothing went to waste here.

“In our old world, the corporate one, people just go to synthesizers for their medical needs,” Sula said. “For Golds in the CBD, a doctor is a computer network manager. The only real medical thinking going on is in labs like the one you worked in at Amelix, or like I worked in at Ipoh, where we work on experiments that result in new programming for the machines to diagnose and treat different conditions. That’s why Coach gets her girls from the Horde, from each of the big biotech firms—we’re the ones who still use scientific thought processes. Our minds still have the capacity that many have lost due to atrophy.”

A capacity Coach fills up with her own agenda.

Wanda cringed. That thought would be revealed to Coach in her confession later, under chemically induced trance, and it would earn her a punishment.

This time, I will choose pain.

Would she be punished for thinking that? It was what Coach wanted her to do, wasn’t it? Why else make her choose between a painful punishment and a humiliating one?

“Coach has decision trees mapped out in the books,” Sula said. “We’re not allowed to answer any question on the decision tree with anything but ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ If there’s any gray area at all, that is, if there’s ever a time you want to say, ‘Yes, and,’ or ‘no, but,’ it becomes an issue for Coach to decide. Coach does not allow anyone else’s attempted logic to create interference with her practice.”

Sula stopped talking and stood staring at the door, where a small group of Saved had entered. Three men and two women stood gazing, awestruck, at a central figure who had apparently led them to the clinic. He had a scab all the way across his forehead and bandages on his neck and under his shirt, but he didn’t seem to be seeking medical attention.

“Coach said to stay away from that guy,” Sula whispered. “She said he’s actually a dangerous criminal they call the Garbageman, and we should not believe the front he presents. She told me to get rid of him if he came back, and I have authority over you. Go get rid of him. Just…tell him this clinic is too small and we can’t have him in the way.” She turned and busied herself with something on a cart, pushing it away in the opposite direction from the group that had entered.

“Yes, Sister.”

As Wanda approached the man, his followers blocked the way with relaxed bodies and tranquil smiles. She had almost failed to notice them, having been so focused on the central figure. Now that she was close to him she felt giddy and nervous. His actions, and his presence here, seemed natural, correct, and ordained by something wiser than herself and more powerful than Coach. She found she couldn’t make herself address him directly. Yet Wanda had to speak. She had been given a direct order.

The people between them were a blessing; she could talk to the group instead of the individual. “I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t be here right now. We’re busy and the clinic is just too crowded.”

The followers held their same positions and facial expressions.

“We certainly don’t mean to interfere in your important work,” one of them said. “We wish to assist with it.” The central figure turned slightly and bent down to one knee next to a bed, gently touching a patient’s forehead and whispering to her. As Wanda watched between two of his followers, the woman’s eyes widened and she smiled broadly, sitting up in bed.

The leader rose to his feet and took a step toward Wanda. The ones standing between them moved off. Her feet felt stuck to the floor. The man had a wide, bulging scab cutting across his forehead that could have made him seem ugly and dangerous had it not been for the look of peaceful benevolence on his face.

“I’m sorry, sir, but this is Coach V’s clinic and she alone is responsible—”

He cut her off, not with words or even a gesture, but simply by looking at her. She tried again. “They said you’re here to assist. Are you…are you a doctor, sir?”

He smiled slightly. Wanda’s eyelids drooped.

Wanda felt a warm glow spreading out from the point where his eyes had met hers. “What…what may I call you, sir?”

He had gentle and knowing eyes. “These friends call me the One Who Returned,” he said.

This was Porter’s group, the Saved. How could she kick them out of their newly captured strategic asset?

Still, the order had been clear, and she would rather challenge these gun-wielding psychopaths than subject herself to more of Coach’s punishments. Yet she stood transfixed, unable to form the words.

Wanda sniffed and shook her head. There truly was something different about this guy, but that didn’t mean she should just let herself be taken in by it. The Saved had just assassinated the Directorate and all its guards, and now here he was, acting concerned about the patients here. His presence made her feel irresistibly compelled to do what was right and good, but his influence was clearly more complicated than that. How could she trust the feelings of virtuousness and compassion he exuded when the people he surrounded himself with were so brutal and callous? How many had they killed in his name to build their power base?

“Coach!” Judee cried from the back room. “Coach? Are you all right?”

Wanda stayed still, uncertain what she should do. The One returned to his rounds, touching patient after patient. “Piyumi, help me start CPR,” Judee said.

“Sir?” Wanda said finally. “There’s an emergency and I may be needed in the back. I need to ask you to—”

The One looked at her. She forgot what she’d been saying.

“You won’t be needed there,” he said. “Your Coach is gone.”

“I …” Wanda said. “You don’t …”

The One nodded, slowly and benevolently. “I know.” He took her hands in his. “I am sorry you were separated from the love of your life. You will soon be raising a new child. I sense that you still have doubts, but you will raise this new child to believe. He will be Saved.”

The One turned away again.

There was a commotion in the lab, sounds of glass breaking and items falling to the floor.

“Coach!” someone shouted. This time the voice belonged to Chi Sun. Wasn’t Coach already back there? “Coach!” Chi Sun shouted again, this time sounding more distressed, even panicky.

“Sisters!” Chi Sun called. “Please come to the back. We need to figure out what to do. Coach is dead.”

Wanda felt a wave of relief begin to build but she refused to let herself experience it until she was sure. Indulging in the belief that she had been freed from Coach’s obsessive and tyrannical control would be catastrophic to her psyche if it were not actually so.

Wanda headed for the back. Someone followed her. Porter. Had he been part of the group surrounding the One?

“I want to help,” he said.

Wanda’s mind barely registered the comment. Could Coach really be dead? How would the clinic run without her? What would happen to the girls, now that the Horde no longer controlled the clinic?

She reached the door to the lab, held open by Sula leaning against it. Coach’s pale, still body lay on the floor in front of the lab bench, her eyes staring at nothing.

“What now?” Judee asked.

“We can’t run this clinic by ourselves,” Sula said.

“She taught me more than she taught anyone, and I can’t take her place,” Chi Sun said.

Porter pushed past Wanda. “This is a hospital and it has to be kept clean. I’ll take the body out so you can gather yourselves. I know what a shock this must be.” He knelt and gingerly picked up Coach’s frail remains, draping her over his arms. Everyone backed away to give him room.

“Each of us only knows a little bit,” Piyumi said. “Coach made sure none of us could replace her. But together we did all of the work to keep the clinic running, and between us we’ve seen everything she used to do. Can we try to keep it open without her, just by each doing what we know how to do?”

“We have to keep it open,” Wanda said. “There’s nowhere for us to go.”

“Don’t worry,” Porter said over his shoulder. “The Saved will help you.”

The place called Dobo Protein Refinery

Inti lay on the floor, staring dully at the man who stood over her. Furius, he’d called himself, though he didn’t seem particularly angry. This world’s language often made no sense.

She hurt everywhere. There were no words for what her kidnappers had done to this body, neither in her language nor in this new, strange, often obscene one.

No. Not to the body. They did it to me.

Had it been just a body, they wouldn’t have enjoyed tearing, beating and fucking it so much. What had really motivated them was that she was inside that body, experiencing the helplessness, the pain, and the shame. What they had taken, what they had been so thrilled to destroy, was the part that had not come from Addi.

Addi’s memories showed she had been to this place, the protein refinery, before. She had been abused here. Both of the broken spirits sharing this body had suffered too much abuse to keep such memories sharp, but Inti was pretty sure this man talking was not the one who had abused Addi.

“Hey!” Furius said, leaning closer into Inti’s face. He adjusted a red shawl around his shoulders. “You listening? Kym here says this Garbageman guy is now the General I’m supposed to follow. I’m bringing my things here to wait for his return.”

The Garbageman! That was the abusive one. He was coming back?

Inti thrashed and moaned. The deep cuts covering her body throbbed as the scabs loosened but she couldn’t stop.

“No, no, honey,” the one he’d called Kym said. “I know you worked for the Garbageman, but he’s not the General. The General is going to rid the world of his kind, don’t you worry.”

Inti calmed, letting the pain and exhaustion consume her. The man harrumphed at the interruption and kept on talking.

“Now, there’s this powder that brings soldiers like me and the general here,” Furius said.

The powder! Like Lucas, like me!

“We’ve got to spread the powder around, and I’m thinking of ways to do that. I figured a way you can help, if you want. If you don’t, you can go and find your own way in life. This is the only use you’ll be to me ‘cause you’re ugly like liquid shit, now. Got it?”

Inti didn’t react, but he kept talking as if she’d agreed. “The guy who last used this body had a contact who makes this drink, called sodje. Popular stuff, seems like everyone here drinks it. I’ve seen groups of people all over the place sharing bottles of it. Anyway, I’m going to introduce you to the bottler and tell him pretty much the truth, that you can’t be a whore anymore and you’ll work there for one meal a day. This guy and my body donor used to be pretty close, so I think I can get him to go for it. And that’s good for you, because another meal a day is gonna come from me, as long as you do what I say. You’ll do that for me, right? You got nothing else you can do.”

The powder apparently brought better people than the ones who lived in this world. Inti truly had nothing else and no other options. She nodded her head slowly.

“Why are you bothering her now, after all she’s been through?” Kym, the one who had saved her, asked. “She’s patched up enough that she can walk, maybe. The sun’s up and we gotta get her to the doctor. She won’t be working at a sodje bottler today no matter what, so you can leave her alone.”

He ignored her. “Just twenty-five doses of Pink Shit, into twenty-five different bottles, every day. That’ll give me a nice steady stream of new soldiers to get organized before the big wave of them comes. Once the backlog of amino acid blocks clears and they start using the ones we’re making here, we’ll be getting hundreds, maybe thousands a day. We gotta be ready for that, and you’re going to help. Twenty-five doses a day. Okay?”

Kym put her arm behind Inti’s shoulders and pulled the wincing girl into a sitting position. “It’s too bad we gotta stay away from Dok’s place now, Addi,” Kym said. “He’s the best. This other one I know is okay, too, but the clinic is farther away.” She pointed at Furius. “Too bad for you that we’re not going to Dok’s place. That’s where I met the General.”

“The General?” he said, almost shouting. “Take me there!”

“Can’t. Nobody’s there now. Not Dok, an’ really not the General. An’ the Feds’re watching the place, alla time. Maybe Unnamed Executives, too.”

“I’ll take my chances with them,” he said. “Don’t have to care how big they are in a world of guns.”

Kym’s voice was angry, breathy and low. “If you’re gonna serve the General, know this: You fuckin’ don’t fight Feds. Think you can take one, or two, or ten, because you got a gun? Fine. You’re a fuckin’ idiot, but fine, say you can. Then there’s gonna be ten or fifty more of ‘em, in person, in trucks and tanks, on helios. They work together and they can always call more. You talk about guns, guess what? Nobody got more guns than Feds do. You fuckin’ can’t fight Feds!”

The man considered what she’d said. “All right. I see. I do understand that kind of power. It’s how Rome conquered the world.”

There was a buzzing sound and Kym went to look at a computer. “Refinery business,” she said. “Four people carrying a body.” She leaned toward the screen’s microphone.

“I see you’re all carrying weapons,” she said. “Scanners pick them all up, so don’t try anything stupid. Two of you stay outside with the weapons and the other two can come in unarmed. Got it?”

Inti watched the screen from across the room. Kym opened the gate electronically, and two men carried in a body. The gate closed behind them and Kym gestured through the office glass, showing the men where to take it. They heaved it onto a small platform that Addi’s memories told her was a scale, and Kym went out to meet them there. The body’s limbs were fairly long and spindly, but even on the screen Inti could see it was not skinny enough. It wasn’t Lucas.

Kym worked out some kind of deal with the men and paid them, probably in casino chips.

“United in faith we live!” someone called from outside the gate. “We serve the One Who Returned! Porter, are you in there? We have news—a meeting of Disciples and they’re waiting for you.”

Furius checked the screen. “Four more of ‘em? A bit suspicious, I’d say.” He drew a gun and stepped out the door.

One of the men who had been negotiating with Kym cupped his mouth with his hand and yelled over the gate. “United in faith we live, brother! This is Porter. I’ll be right out.”

Kym followed the two men toward the gate. Furius pushed past her and approached them, talking. Inti could no longer keep her eyes from closing but she continued to listen to his voice. Unlike most of this world’s inhabitants who apparently felt it was better to go unnoticed, Furius seemed constantly to speak in a loud and attention-seeking way.

“Hey, you there! What did you say just now?” Furius said, his voice becoming fainter as he moved away. “You serve one who returned?”

Inti’s attention faded. She reopened her eyes, widening them and clenching her sore jaw in an attempt to maintain consciousness. This was a dangerous place with terrible people, and there were too many strangers here to let go. Her eyes closed again anyway.

The next time she opened them, she was lying on a stretcher between two poles. The ends of the poles near her feet left lines in the gravel. She was being dragged somewhere.

Grunting in pain, she sat bolt upright. Or tried to. She was tied up! Inti thrashed and twisted, trying to raise her hands to the strap around her midsection.

“Shh! It’s okay.”

It was the woman. Kym. Kym gently stroked from Inti’s right temple to her cheek, one of the few parts of her body not covered in knife slashes. In the background, Furius was talking excitedly. “Higher than a general! Sounds like we’ve got a new praetor! Now things are really going to start happening here.”

Kym leaned close, talking quietly. “Furius talked to these guys; they’re parta some religious group or some shit like that. They gotta doctor for you. We’re takin’ you there so you can get better, but you gotta join their religion.”

The clinic Mikk had captured

Mikk Evans wasn’t the type to gush in gratitude for his fortune. Whatever he got in life always seemed to be a little less than he deserved. That was why guys like Mikk always rose to the top: Lesser men were easy to satiate.

Still, the last few days had been a hell of a ride. Once the Horde’s leadership was out of the way, Hordesmen had been begging to become Saved. They already had thousands, and more were coming every day, clamoring to do whatever the fuck Mikk said.

It wasn’t all good, of course. He’d started out unconscious, right here, in this clinic. Then some other fucking guy had awakened in Mikk’s head instead of him, controlling his body and leaving Mikk memories of all this idiotic shit he’d done, like springing out of bed and running around the place, touching all the sick fucks lying around, like he’d never heard of getting germs. Shit like that pissed Mikk off, the memory of this fruitstick in his head mopping up diseases with Mikk’s own bare hands.

But that was also what had gotten him here today, to this position of power. The patients had started gathering around him, hanging on everything he said and staring at him with their mouths open. This other guy in his head could talk for hours, and they all just sat mesmerized, staring at him, listening to stories and self-help kinds of shit. That left Mikk to actually put them to work, because what the hell good was a big group of people if you weren’t going to use them for anything? The growing collection of people around him, all of them practically begging to be told what to do, was too powerful a force to ignore. As far as they knew, he’d healed them and brought them back from the brink. They owed him obedience. That first day when he’d left the clinic, a full dozen of them had trailed along, telling everyone they met about how great he was and how he would heal and protect them. By the next morning, there had been a hundred or more, all reaching out to others. The more people who followed him, the easier it was to convince new ones to join. Everybody was afraid of getting sick or injured, especially here on the filthy Zone streets.

It was weird, but Mikk himself kind of believed the bit about healing them. From his memories it seemed like even the grossest of these fuckers were actually getting better.

Whatever. The important thing was that they believed he was Holy Fucking Shit. The power they gave him wasn’t the kind he was used to lording over junkies and whores. These people were afraid of everything but Mikk, like Fiends and diseases and other typical Zone shit, and they kissed Mikk’s ass all the time, hoping he’d use his magic mojo to protect them from it. All he had to do was make his voice sound strung out on jellies, all calm and melodic and douchey, like this Holy Shit who sometimes took a turn in his head, and they’d fucking do anything he said, just like that.

They called him the One.

And that was where the real power was. Years on the streets had proven the effectiveness of making people fear him, but nothing compared to being worshipped.

The patients never sprung back to life when Mikk was Mikk, the way they did when the other guy was here. Mikk supposed it was some sort of power of positive thinking type of deal; they got better with that guy because he actually seemed to care about what happened to them. They were certainly useful, especially the zealots, but Mikk couldn’t be bothered about whether any particular one lived or died. Why deal with all that, when so many new ones sprang up every day to replace them?

There were always zealots nearby, maybe one percent of them who doted on him, bringing him food and clothes and pretty much begging for him to boss them around. They’d even set up an apartment for him across the street from his clinic—the only other unit with all its glass windows still intact in this whole area! Already Mikk seemed to have amassed a small army of devotees who were all obviously over-the-top in their support and dedication to the One’s many pursuits, including Mikk’s own idea to knock off the Directorate and take over the clinic.

All he had to do was keep his face blank, his voice tranquil, and his orders clear. Mikk leaned toward one of the zealots nearby, hooking two fingers at him. “C’mere.”

“Yes, Lord?” the zealot asked.

“I got a job for you.” With his voice he struggled to mimic the effect of tranquilizers. “My son.” He’d never actually bothered to learn the man’s name, but the way he hung around and stared at Mikk with big cartoon eyes showed he was definitely one of the zealots. Calling zealots “my son” seemed to get shit done. Mikk pulled him closer with a fistful of shirt. “Through the glass, in the parking lot, behind my left shoulder,” he said. “Yellow shirt, yellow hair. Maybe, I dunno, fifteen or so. See her?”

“Yes, Lord,” the zealot said.

“Get her. I want her in my apartment in fifteen minutes. No need to pretend she has a choice.”

The zealot’s face went sort of blank and pale. He was a Gold so all those reactions were exaggerated, changing his complexion like that. The little gears in the zealot’s head froze up for a moment and he just stood there, staring.

“Yes, Lord,” he said finally.

One of the nurses, or bedpan jockeys, or whatever they were, came up by him, irritatingly close. “Excuse me?” she said. “I need to speak to this patient a moment.” She pointed past Mikk to the head of the bed.

“Go around the other way,” Mikk said. This angle gave the best view of the parking lot. Mikk watched his zealot work his way through the beds and out through the glass door, approaching the girl.

The fuck?

There, out in the gravel that had once been a parking lot, stood a collection of individuals from his past. Kym and that shithead Mr. B. together? And why would either of them be standing here with one of his whores, all cut up on a stretcher? Was this some kind of sabotage? A trick?

No matter what they were up to, these three posed a threat to everything Mikk had achieved with these people. Mikk knew the zealot who had brought them, too; the one called Porter.

Porter came up to the building, peering through the glass as he walked. Spotting Mikk, he flung open the door and came up quickly, making some little bowing gesture. “United in faith we live, Lord,” he said.

Mikk nodded at him.

“I have encountered a man who is desperate to meet you, Lord. He wants to believe. It appears that he and the woman with him run a protein refinery nearby. There’s also a girl we brought who needs immediate medical attention.

That puke Mr. B tries to take over my refinery and now he gets himself brought here to show me he cut up one of my whores? What’s he up to?

Bringing his tone way down, Mikk said, “She won’t survive, my son. All this clinic would do is prolong her suffering. The man she’s with is the one who cut her. She needs to end her misery and he needs to be punished.” Porter was a smart enough guy. He’d know what that meant. Wouldn’t he?

Porter just stood there.

Mikk leaned in closer and grabbed him tightly by the shoulder, right at his neck. “Just drop ‘em both right fuckin’ there, all right?” He cleared his throat. “My son. Bring the protein refinery woman to my apartment, and throw out the bimbo who’ll already be in there.”

Porter stood still another moment. Was this zealot going to give Mikk a hard time about this, after he’d done such a good job following orders in taking over this clinic?

“Yes, Lord,” Porter said finally. He went back out and shot the whore Addi right in the face, twice, as she lay on the stretcher. He spun toward Mr. B but the dealer was too fast for him, drawing two guns of his own. Both men fired, but Mr. B was already running toward the corner with Kym. Porter shot three times but probably missed.

Porter clutched at what looked like a fairly light shoulder wound, stumbling to one knee. He made a good show of climbing back up and chasing after Mr. B, but Mikk would have to punish him for fucking up like this.

Near the River

Ernesto tried to focus on staying one step behind Arrulfo and slightly to the left, as Arrulfo had taught him to do. Staying upright as they ran through the slippery mud was difficult but he kept his hands over his ears as best he could. Concentrating sometimes helped to block out the sounds and commotion. Ernesto watched the distance and angle between himself and Arrulfo as they ran, but it was hard to maintain position because they were running on the sloping bank next to the river, and being chased by the screeching heliodrone.

The helio noise was terrifying, and so loud that even when Ernesto pushed his earlobes into the holes in his ears and covered them with all his fingers, it still went straight through his head. Ernesto screamed to try blocking out the sound, but he wasn’t loud enough. He fell behind and Arrulfo grabbed his arm, ripping his hand away from his ear to pull him forward. Rosa slipped and Arrulfo turned to help her, then Ernesto slipped, falling into the mud face-first.

Arrulfo yanked him up again and they ran under a bridge. The helio was closer than ever, its sound consuming all of Ernesto’s thoughts.

Suddenly Arrulfo was pushing him forward, toward an opening they’d found under the bridge. The helio appeared, screaming and shuddering, spraying droplets of mud as it struggled to remain upright in the drafts it was causing.

The opening led to a tube, and then they were sliding down, falling, and landing on a hard surface below the entrance. The vibrations in the tube and floor said something heavy was dragging, shifting to cover the opening through which they’d come, sealing them in total darkness.

A new sound, more frightening than anything Ernesto had ever heard, erupted outside. The helio was shooting. The bullets weren’t coming this way, having been redirected by whatever had moved to trap them here, but the sound made his stomach feel turned inside-out.

As suddenly as the shooting had started, it stopped again.

The girl, Eadie, flicked the lighter Ernesto had restored and for a moment, produced a small flame. The brief flash of light revealed a roomful of smudged, wide-eyed faces.

The clinic

Wanda poured a sterile uric acid solution over the wound in Porter’s right shoulder. He shuddered and inhaled, producing a low, sucking hiss. The One had gone back to his posh apartment.

“The bullet went through your trapezius muscle,” Wanda said. “As you were mindlessly, heartlessly killing that injured girl.”

She shouldn’t have said it. The Saved owned the clinic. The Saved owned her. Porter had just shown his true nature, and yet she found herself so disgusted and shocked that she couldn’t help the words tumbling out.

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “You were right here. You heard him give the order.”

“You know what I heard? I heard a psychopath tell you to do something twisted and evil. Then I watched you do it. That’s what your faith brought you to, shooting a bleeding woman on a stretcher? Some lord and savior you’ve got there.”

“He doesn’t always seem so psychotic, you know. You’ve seen him when he’s… I don’t know what to call it. Magical? Holy? Serene? I know you’ve met that One.”

“I watched you as he said it. You were shocked. You knew there was nothing holy about killing that girl, but you did it anyway. You could have decided to turn away from it. Instead you killed for him.”

She stopped rinsing the wound but kept the little pail under his shoulder as it continued to drip.

“Are you going to stitch it?” he asked.

“Can’t. The size and shape of the wound makes it too likely that I’d stitch an air pocket and cause sepsis. It’s just going to have to fill itself in over time. Once the bleeding stops I’ll bandage it.” She realized she was crushing the plastic bottle in her hand and tried to relax her grip. “See, I feel a duty to respect and protect human life, even in those who murder people for no reason at all. Oh, sorry, not for no reason. You did it because your holy psycho told you to.”

“You don’t understand,” he said. “That’s not what it’s about.”

“And you know what’s funny?” she said. “You never seemed like the other crazies he keeps close, the ones who stare and swoon. You always appeared to be the most logical one. You seem sane, but then surprise! You’re willing to do anything he tells you to do.”

“United in faith we live, Wanda,” he said.

“Yeah, your mantra makes everything okay.”

“Listen to the words. It’s important. United, we live. I don’t think I have to tell you what happens here in the Zone if you’re not part of a group. Why is this group growing so fast? What holds it together and brings in stunning numbers of new recruits, every single day? It’s that magnetism he has, that uniqueness that only the One can provide.

“Nobody rallies around nothing, Wanda. I saw early on that people rallied around him, and that when enough of them joined together they would become a legitimate force here in the Zone. That’s exactly what they did. Sure, sometimes the One absolutely terrifies me. Sometimes he makes me do things that turn my stomach, like today. But I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be part of this group, no matter how psychotic and dangerous it is. This is the Zone. If you choose not to join with anyone, your life is down to maybe a few hours, a few days at best.”

She stared.

“I’m not looking for absolute truth,” he said. “Just security. It’s better to be Saved than to be a Fiend or to be dead.” He shrugged. “You don’t agree, fine. Go ahead and hate me for it. At least I’ll still be alive.”

Desert outside Des Moines

“There appears to be a signal now, sir, reachable through the truck’s booster,” Li’l Ed’s EI voice told him. The rather stuffy male synthetic vocal pattern he’d selected sounded eerily out of place, given his situation.

A signal!

“Open it, Edward,” Li’l Ed said. “Communication mode. Call my father.”

His father’s face appeared translucently before him, its features difficult to make out as Li’l Ed concentrated on driving straight toward the distant city lights. “I’m so sorry, sir! It wasn’t me. The Unnamed disconnected my EI.”

“Unnamed?” His father sighed sadly. “I was afraid of this. How are you talking to me now if they Departed you?”

“I’m not Departed, sir. It wasn’t McGuillian Unnamed, sir. I was taken to meet with Chairman Williams, of Williams Gypsum. He offered me a job as his Unnamed.”

“What?”

“I turned him down, sir, as it had already been decided that I would submit for voluntary.”

“And …” his father peered at something through his own EI that must have been a mapping and location program. “You’re traveling now. You turned down the unstable owner of a sovereign corporation, and he’s just giving you a ride home?”

“No, sir. His Unnamed tried to kill me in the desert. I stole this truck and ran away.”

“You stole a truck from an Unnamed? How did you manage something like that?”

“I’m out in the desert, somewhere, sir. I’m quite sure he was going to kill me. I jumped out, and he tried to shoot me, but I was able to get back to the truck before he did. There’s a lot of dust blowing around, so much I can’t see more than a couple meters in front of me. Maybe it messed up his tech? He fired at me but missed.”

His father smiled. “Oh, Li’l Ed, that’s wonderful news! When you turn in the truck, you’ll be a true hero! You’ll start off much better after reconditioning than you would have otherwise. Good job, Li’l Ed!”

“Thank you, sir. I wasn’t able to use my EI for communication until just now and I know you told me to submit for voluntary reconditioning right away. Shall I go and do that now, sir?”

“Yes, immediately. I’m proud of you, Li’l Ed.”

New Union School

“And cupping the chin,” the New Union instructor said, “pull backwards until your palm impacts the base of the skull—gently, now. Remember, this classmate is a New Union asset so I’m going slowly. When it’s not a training exercise, you’ll be using full force. Strike two or three times, quickly, and then slam him down the rest of the way to the ground. Ideally, he’ll be stunned and immobilized so you can walk him straight to the Divinators.”

Divinators.

Rus had a few quick flashes of memory—fire, noise, humiliation, terrible pain. The Divinators were damned good at making you see that you were nothing but a lump of shit for the New Union to mold into something better. Every time he thought of them, it was just a slideshow of the same few images, and then his mind filled with black again. Right now he was training—being molded—at the New Union school. That was all he needed, or wanted, to think about.

School was the second stage of training after new soldiers were captured. Rus had come here straight from the Divinators, starting as a class with others who’d been captured at the same time. Of the eight Bridges who’d been grabbed that day, Rus had only seen Pawley since, and only once. Pawley had started the school at the same time, but separated off into another group.

“A fist in the face will work, as well,” his short and wiry teacher, Instructor Jodo, said. “If you go for the face, there’s more chance he’s gonna fight you, because he can see it coming. Remember, we just want to capture them and turn them over to the Divinators with as little struggle as possible.”

Rus merely had to survive. There was no reason to question morality when he was powerless to enforce what he felt was right, anyway.

Somewhere in the mist

Addi was in some sort of cave. There was snow around the entrance but she was farther inside, where only a few wisps had blown. There was no sensation of cold.

The mist was thick in the opening of the cave, but lighter here, and the faint gray light allowed her to see the other girl. She recognized her instantly, but the appearance was still shocking.

Inti sat leaning against the wall, wrapped in rough blankets of red, brown, gray and orange. Her hair was so black it had a blue sheen, hanging in tight braids around her pretty, diamond-shaped brown face and wise, narrow brown eyes. She moved slightly, causing a necklace of tiny bells and metal trinkets to jingle a bit.

“Oh, Addi!” Inti said. “You are so beautiful!”

Addi raised a hand and touched her own face. The scars were gone. Even her missing toe was back!

“What is this place?” Addi asked, though she already knew.

“This is where I died, in this cave at the top of the mountain,” Inti said. “I will carry on from here.”

“But…why am I here with you?”

“Oh.” Inti sat quietly for a moment. “Maybe just to say goodbye. To share this moment together.” Her smile was sad but genuine.

“And what do you think I’m supposed to do now?” Addi asked.

Inti didn’t speak. She just gestured at the cave’s opening. They sat together in silence a long time. Addi leaned to hug Inti and they squeezed each other tightly.

“What will you do?” Addi asked.

“I don’t know. I’ll make my way somehow.”

“Maybe we can go together,” Addi said.

“This looks like the mountain, and it is the mountain where I died, but yet I do not think either of us has been to this world before,” Inti said. “We don’t know what the rules are, here.” She paused. “Maybe we can stay together. I don’t want to be alone.”

They sat a bit longer and then took each other’s hand. They crawled through the cave together, awkwardly making their way across the uneven stone without unclasping their hands, for which Addi was tremendously grateful. At the opening, they stepped out into the mist, and the mountain disappeared.

Some Zone street

Furius dropped another packet of Pink Shit and kept on walking.

Kym had said her General had nothing to do with the Saved, and it was pretty clear she was telling the truth since they’d nearly killed her, too. Now they were working together, and it seemed a pretty good match. She knew how to run the refinery, and he knew how to keep the place safe from punks.

One packet per block would generate a lot of new soldiers soon, at least around here. The business types in the entertainment areas never picked up drugs because their urine, blood, and hair was constantly tested, but that was okay. Mr. B.’s old friend had now agreed to a substantial bribe in exchange for dosing every last bottle of sodje, mostly bound for the entertainment district. Kym was churning out more dosed amino bricks every day, and the glut was apparently over so they were again being taken up for synthesizers. The salarymen would probably make shitty soldiers, but he was going to have legions of them soon.

Mikk’s new apartment

“As yet we’ve been unable to feed the poor at the stations you had us set up, Lord,” Porter said. “There is simply nothing to give, beyond our spreading of your word. Your Helpers are repeating your most recent message, that we shouldn’t judge others. They’re ready for any new messages you would like them to pass on.”

Mikk smiled to himself. Sometimes he really appreciated the other guy in his head. “That’s right,” he said. “I judge. Whatever the question, I’m the one who answers it. They go trying to figure shit out for themselves, it’ll be chaos. Keep ‘em humble.”

Porter opened his mouth to speak, but Mikk stopped him with a raised palm. “Wait. Before you tell me anything else, I want to know whether you’ve found that fucker you let get away, Mr. B. Did your people go back to the protein refinery?”

“Yes, Lord. The refinery was locked down tightly and nobody answered, even when we went with carbon recyclables and posed as customers. We believe they were out, but it could also be that they recognized us as Saved, Lord.”

“Stay on it. I want that fucker dead.”

“Yes, Lord,” Porter said. “There’s something else, Lord. We’re suffering increasing casualties. The Fiends are starting to attack more frequently, Lord.”

“We need more guns,” Mikk said. “The captured Fiend ones we got from the Horde are good, but we need a hell of a lot more of ‘em, and fast. To get guns we need money. What assets we got to work with?”

“Almost nothing, Lord. We are a collection of desperately poor people, as you know. We do control a good portion of what used to be Horde territory, though.”

“Okay. Here’s what we do. First, we push all the Saved to give up whatever they can. There’s your new message: Give us your stuff. Wait. No. How do we say it? Let go of material possessions.” Mikk shrugged. “Some shit like that.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Then we implement some new policies. From now on, only Saved get access to the clinic. If they’re coming for treatment and either they or anyone with them has anything of value, tell them they’re not truly Saved if they’re keeping that for themselves instead of donating it to the cause.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“If I’m gonna start giving these people weapons, I have to be sure which ones’re truly on my side.”

“Yes, Lord. How will we know?”

“First, make damned sure they’re terrified of the Fiends, like constantly pissing themselves with fear. I want every grisly Fiend story repeated until every last Saved knows it by heart. If you got some way to write ‘em down, that’s even better. Pass ‘em on so everyone knows what’s waiting if they leave the Saved.”

“Yes, Lord.”

“Then, we gotta find the real zealots in the bunch. I want you to set up weekly meetings where the Saved are encouraged to fink each other out. Every time any of them second-guesses my orders or gets a little too assertive, I want to know about it. After a few weeks, you’ll know who to make into the group leaders. Start feeding and housing the leaders a little better; make sure they feel rewarded. Eventually, when we have some, the leaders will get weapons.”

“Yes, Lord.”

Amelix lab

The control the rats had over her should perhaps have been frightening, if Chelsea had been able to consider it much at all. More frightening by far would have been the fact that she wasn’t able to consider it, but that didn’t cross her mind often, either. The little flashes of thoughts like that she did have were coming with diminishing frequency.

It wasn’t a particularly puppet-like form of control, though they did certainly have the ability to move any part of her in any way. Puppet-like control would have trapped her inside a body that kept moving of its own accord, making her a stowaway consciousness tagging along as her stolen physical form marched off to do its new masters’ bidding. Instead, the rats made her want to do things. With increasing frequency, she found herself obsessed with activities she never otherwise would have considered, including many that should have horrified her.

Finally this task was finished. They would let her leave this newly requisitioned lab space to go home and sleep, and in a few hours she would be back, serving them according to…their plan? Yes, she reasoned, all this had to be part of a plan. The reasoning, and her ability to do it, vanished again.

She checked the seals on all ninety cages, making sure each one had remained properly sealed after she had injected air from the G2 cage in her office. She turned out the light as she left the room, letting the new generation of Rat Gods rest.