Dark Revelations (39 page)

Authors: Duane Swierczynski,Anthony E. Zuiker

chapter 80

DARK

B
lair had a slightly crazed look on his face.

“I knew you’d catch him, Dark. All this time, I knew it would be
you
who caught him. There’s never been a manhunter like you.”

“Damien, seriously—put the gun down. He’s out. And he’s not going anywhere. Where’s Natasha and the rest of the team?”

“Move aside,” Blair said quietly. “I’m not asking. Consider that a direct order. Move aside now.”

“Direct order, my ass.”

“Don’t make me shoot through you.”

Dark shook his head, confused. “All this time, and you want to kill him?”

“You don’t understand. He can’t be allowed to live. He’s far too dangerous for that.”

Dark surprised himself by positioning his body squarely in front of Labyrinth’s. Five years ago, he probably would have helped Blair kill this son of a bitch—held him down and everything.

But five years ago, he had an uncontrollable rage in his blood, and he’d almost lost himself. No matter what any blood tests said—he was his own man. Not controlled by his genes, or his bloodline, or anything besides his free will. That was the difference. Dark was a different man now. He wasn’t about to slide back into the past.

He told Blair:

“No. We’re taking him in.”

“You don’t get it. You need to trust me on this one.”

“No, you need to explain it to me.”

Blair sighed—but kept the gun trained on Dark. It didn’t move the slightest bit. The man’s focus was keen, unshakeable.

“I wasn’t lying to you when I said that I created Global Alliance to catch Labyrinth. That’s because only I knew what he was capable of, and I knew that if I ever had a chance of catching him, I’d have to assemble the best.”

“You’re not making much sense.”

“Before I created Global Alliance . . . I created Labyrinth.”

Dark couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You what?”

“This was almost fifteen years ago. We were both young and ambitious, working for an offshoot of MI6. You were part of Special Circs? Well, this was something similar—only in espionage. We were tasked with creating the ultimate agent—a man who could go anywhere, anytime, for any mission, with no limitations. Someone who could pluck an eyelash from the face of the sitting president of the United States just to prove he could do it. Literally, a man who could save the world in case of dire emergency. The code name for the project was
Labyrinth
.”

“You
created
this motherfucker?”

“As a force of
good
in the world,” Blair said. “At first, Labyrinth wasn’t a person. It was a concept. We even flipped for who would become Labyrinth.”

“I’m guessing you lost.”

“No. My former friend here lost. Lost
himself
. If I had known what madness would follow, I would have scrapped the project and burned the files.”

“So why the fuck didn’t you tell us who we were hunting from the beginning? Knowing his real name would have been a help, for starters.”

“Doesn’t matter what his real name was,” Blair said. “He abandoned it fifteen years ago. That was part of the project. Complete erasure of identity, so that if an enemy agent did capture Labyrinth, no reprisals could be visited upon his family. This project depended on a new name, a new face, and cutting-edge treatments and fierce field-op training. We created a laundry list of what the ultimate agent would look like, then we set about creating it—in
him
.”

Dark thought about Labyrinth’s movements. The ease with which he crossed borders and thresholds and office lobbies. The way he hid his movements, his calls, his purchases, his thefts. His ability to pry his way into someone’s deepest darkest secrets. Seemed to be consistent with the abilities of an “ultimate intelligence agent.”

But so much was left unexplained—such as the priceless artifacts, the weapons, and the funding.

“Is he still on the Global Alliance payroll?” Dark asked. “All this time you kept bragging about your unlimited budgets and unrestrained access. That sounds a lot like what this son of a bitch has been enjoying.”

“No,” Blair said. “I haven’t seen him in ten years. We had a . . .
very violent
parting of ways.”

“What happened?”

“We came to disagree about our mission, on the whole notion of what it meant to do good in the world. I ran specialized missions to put Labyrinth to the best possible use. However, he began to suffer delusions of grandeur—thinking he was some kind of higher being, meant to single-handedly fix the world’s ills. When I realized that the strain had been too much, and that my friend’s mind had snapped, I did what needed to be done.”

“Which was?” Dark asked.

“I sent a highly skilled hit team after him,” Blair said. “The elite of the elite, the military’s best manhunters. They never returned. Their bodies—never recovered. And then Labyrinth himself vanished . . . utterly and completely. But I knew he wasn’t dead. He’d just gone down deeper than he ever had before—so deep, even I couldn’t find a trace of him.
Just like he had been trained to do.
I moved on to other projects, but I knew Labyrinth would be back for revenge. So I slowly built Global Alliance, gathering the best operatives in the world to tackle the worst of the worst. Because I knew that someday Labyrinth would reemerge, and I would need the best possible team to neutralize him. There was no sign of him until a few weeks ago, when he emerged to send his first package to the LAPD. With that, I knew that everything I’d feared had come true. Only it wasn’t revenge he was after. All this time he’d been away, working on his plan to save the world.”

“Save the world? By what—a campaign of terror?”

“But it’s not a terror campaign at all. From that first package, I knew what he was doing. He was trying to
turn the world.
”

Dark stared at him, waiting for him to explain.

Blair smiled. “It was Labyrinth’s most prized ability—to be able to
turn
an individual. Flip an enemy from their side to your side. Coax a source into surrendering top secret information.”

“How?”

“At first it was a joke between us—the idea that we were leading a lab mouse through a series of corridors until he reached the center of the labyrinth. But instead of finding cheese, the poor mouse would offer up his own cheese. Gladly. Willingly. We ran many experiments in Eastern Europe—volunteers, for the most part. Labyrinth here became quite adept at running people through the corridors of their own mind, knowing exactly which buttons to push to make them scurry one way, or another. At first we used a certain regiment of drugs to soften up our subjects, but soon Labyrinth could work just as well without them. Give him a day, and he could turn your life inside out . . . just by speaking to you.”

All at once Dark realized what Blair meant by
turning the world
. Labyrinth’s entire campaign was about leading the world itself, the hive mind of modern social media, down a series of corridors until they gave
him
what he wanted.

Control.

Domination.

A voice spoke up from behind Dark.

“Well, it didn’t work on you, Damien.”

chapter 81

LABYRINTH

O
h yes.

I am awake.

I’ve been awake the whole time.

I know how to take the worst blows any mortal can offer. So I let Dark beat me and handcuff me and think he had the upper hand.

I know that I am in no real danger of being apprehended or killed.

They can’t stop my plans now.

No matter how hard they try.

I also admit—I also wanted to hear my old friend DAMIEN’s explanation. And I must say, it is not entirely satisfactory.

His version of our association, of our mission, makes our experiment sound like a bad television movie of the week.

Oooh, the noble spy, just trying to do the right thing until his mentally imbalanced friend BETRAYED HIM and left him to pick up the pieces....

Such utter SHIT.

Like everything else in the world, the truth about my origin is far messier, far more complex, far more subtle than what Blair can stammer through in his ham-handed attempt to shoot me in the face and erase what he perceives as the biggest mistake of his life.

We are the parents of the NEW ORDER, Damien, can’t you see that? But you shy away from your parental responsibilities, fearful of the implication, still wrapped up in some misguided religious guilt.

You are the facilitator.

I AM THE DOER.

Just as always.

But instead of a warm powerful glow, you see blood on your hands.

It is not blood

Good sir

IT IS THE AFTERBIRTH OF THE NEW AGE

Yes

YOU ARE WEAK YOU WERE ALWAYS WEAK SO EAGER TO OPEN NEW DOORWAYS BUT SO RELUCTANT TO STEP THROUGH THEM, DAMIEN! IF THE COIN HAD TILTED TO THE RIGHT INSTEAD OF THE LEFT IT COULD BE YOU INHABITING MY SKIN . . .

BUT IT DIDN’T

FATE ANOINTED ME!

And that

KILLS YOU, DOESN’T IT?

But I don’t speak these thoughts aloud. There is the inner me and the outer me; the outer me moves me through the world and the inner me knows that he will someday rule it.

chapter 82

DARK

D
ark turned to face Labyrinth, who was still handcuffed to the operating table. The man was smirking, even with blood running down from his hairline and nasty purple bruises forming on his battered flesh. Labyrinth was
gloating
. Instinctively, Dark knew that meant something else was in play—another attack under way. Labyrinth was still running them around the maze. Which was all the more reason to keep the fucker alive. Killing him would only make it more difficult to stop the death trap he’d already set into motion.

“So I’m going to end this,” Blair said quietly.

“No,” Dark said.

“Tell me, Dark—what did Blair promise you to make you join his little team? Did he tell you he’d keep the monsters away from your little girl, Sibby? Did he promise you peace, of some kind? Keep you so busy chasing the so-called
bad guys
that you’d have no time to brood over your dead wife?”

“He needs to die now,” Blair said. “Step aside.”

“We have him,” Dark said. “We don’t need to kill him. We’ll make him sing.”

“What, are you going to pour water down my throat, Dark? Make me gurgle until I . . . how did you put it, sing?”

“He’s smarter than that,” Blair said.

“I am, Steve Dark. Oh, I am! So, so smart. You should listen to the man. He thinks he created me, after all.”

“I’ll shoot through you if I have to,” Blair said.

“Then stop talking about it and just fucking do it.”

“Yes!” Labyrinth cried. “Do it! Pull the trigger! Please please please! It will help things considerably!”

And then something exploded above them.