Then he felt the rush of bubbles, and the string shot past him. He reached out, visualized his hands closing about it. It yanked him up and out, whisking him through chaotic rock into dusty air, and then into space. The darkness curled around him.
As he raced back down the dark tunnel, he felt himself fading again, growing tired as his body, back in the air shaft, failed from lack of oxygen. One of his hands slipped from the string. He jerked it back up, but the effort of holding on seemed suddenly monumental. Beneath his grasp, the message whispered like a dream.
If Galen meant for the Centauri to die, then he would be dead. You have been deceived. Galen wanted you to contact me. That is why we are having this conversation. I don't know how, but he is using you to find me. But let him come to me, if he dares. I am ready. I'm afraid, though, that you may not be. As soon as Galen locates me, he will be finished with you. And while he might let the Centauri live, I doubt he is of a mind to show mercy to you.
The blackness unfolded and he shot down through the layers of Babylon 5, into the shaft, into his body. He released the string, and the bubbling currents of his blood enfolded him in their thick warmth. He wanted to rest there; he had never been so tired. Yet something made him think of Morden - it was time, finally, to kill Morden, and that thought moved him to continue.
He dissolved the equation, and his body fell upon him, a heavy, dead weight, needing something, burning for something. With a tight, wheezing gasp he sucked in air. Chest heaving, body shaking, he grabbed up the plasma gun, turned his head away, and fired point-blank at the vent.
A jolt threw him against the side of the shaft. Smoke filled the air. He turned back. The vent and a chunk of the shaft were gone. He extended the trembling gun through the hole, aimed the crude weapon down at the angular silhouettes crawling with white dots of static. He squeezed the trigger again, again, and it recoiled silently in his hand.
The blasts flared white as they hit, and after the first three shots the Shadows' veils began to fail, revealing, in the plasma's flashing distortion, glimpses of that elusive enemy: a flailing black limb, an angular head, the piercing white malice of eyes. With the next blast, those eyes erupted in a great blooming white brilliance, the seething light rushing out to envelop the room, envelop him, envelop everything.
He could feel it against his skin, unraveling, de-cohering, degenerating, and as it faded, a shriek echoed through it, close and distant at once. Then the light was gone. One of the Shadows dead.
He concentrated on the other, and within a few seconds it too blazed with a dazzling, shrieking light, then faded away. They were gone – no static, no bodies, no sign. And Morden was screaming.
With an equation of motion Galen propelled himself out of the shaft, dropped down in front of Morden, brought the gun to bear. Morden fell silent, hunching forward, his face contorted as if in pain. His hand went to the black stone hanging from his neck, clutched it.
"Well go ahead," he said. "Kill me. That's what you're here for, isn't it?"
Galen held himself in stillness, heat burning out through his skin. He allowed himself only a single thought. He would give Morden one chance to prove he was the Shadows' unwilling slave. When Morden failed, he would die.
* * *
"Before you came to us, Anna," Justin said, "before we awakened you to your true potential, you lived as the Humans do. You had a husband, John Sheridan. He has become very important in this war."
Justin paused as the two technicians raised the dead Drakh's body on a floating table, escorted him out of the room. Then Anna was left with Justin and Elizar, and standing behind them, with shining black skin and brilliant rows of eyes, the liberators.
Anna took another piece of food from the tray before her. Whatever the liberators wanted her to do, she would do, for their wisdom was truly unparalleled. She had forgotten that for a short time, in her disturbance at losing the machine. But now she understood. They would perfect her.
Justin turned back to her.
"John is confused. He's fighting us. He doesn't understand the First Principles. He doesn't realize that chaos is superior to order. He, personally, has destroyed three of your sisters within the last year."
"How can a Human be so powerful?"
"It's even worse than that. He convinced the Vorlons to attack us in that battle a few months ago. I'm sure you know it was a terrible defeat for us. Many were lost."
John Sheridan was the greatest threat to them after the Vorlons. She had not realized. So many of her sisters had fallen, because of him.
"I will not stop until he is utterly destroyed." Justin raised a hand.
"No, no, Anna. It may come to that, but we're hoping it won't. We believe if we can explain things to John, he'll realize his mistake and join with us. If we could convince him to work with us, victory would be ours."
"The enemy must be utterly destroyed."
"John may not be our enemy. He may simply be confused. We see great potential in him, as we saw in you. We're hoping his potential can be released."
But he had killed so many of her sisters.
"What if he is our enemy? What if he doesn't understand?"
Justin frowned.
"Then the liberators will make him understand. He will do as he's told."
Yes, the liberators would make him understand. Once he met them, how could he fail to see their brilliance?
"When he joins us, what will he do? How can we gain victory through one Human?"
Justin's wrinkled face softened.
"John is what we call a nexus. Imagine the entire galaxy is one great machine. John is the heart of that machine. If we can control him, the rest will follow."
"I am to control him?" The idea appealed to her.
"Yes, similar to the way you controlled your machine, though the means are different. You must control him as one Human controls another. As his wife, you have power over him. He cares for you, and you may use that concern to manipulate him. You need to prove to John that you love him, and that you want what is best for him. You want him to understand what we're really all about. We need you to bring John here, and to help convince him to join us."
It seemed so strange that she had a husband, and that she might have influence over him.
"Will he remember me?"
"Yes. And you must be as he remembers. He'll doubt it's really you, at first. He'll question you. That's why we need you to remember. We believed a telepath was the best way to retrieve those memories. Since that didn't work, we're going to try something else. A treatment, a chemical infusion. Something to help break down the barriers. Do you understand?"
She would remember what she needed, she would control John, they would achieve victory, and she would be joined with the Eye. Then she would know true ecstasy.
"I understand," she said.
* * *
"Smile for me," Galen said.
Fire raced along the lines of his tech; heat spilled out of him. He wanted to obliterate that maddening smile. He wanted to conjure the one-term equation. He wanted to crush Morden. No exercise could turn his thoughts from that.
In his mind's eye he began to reconstruct the star field he had seen, tried to match it to a specific location. The walls of mental discipline drew tighter around him. They hardly mattered, though, for they merely concentrated his attention on that hated figure that stood at the end of the long, dark tunnel.
Morden remained hunched over, his hand still clutching the necklace.
"Do I detect a little bitterness?"
His voice was rough. Galen grabbed Morden's wrist, pulled his hand from the stone, held it up between them.
"Smile for me, or I'll implode one bone at a time. When I'm done with your hands and your feet, then your arms go, then your legs, then your eyes. Then your tongue."
Morden bared his teeth in a quick, humorless grin. "So you're not going to kill me?"
The smile was nothing like his usual one. Yet what did that prove? A loyal agent might be unhappy at the deaths of his powerful associates. That did not mean his previous smiles had been false, chemically induced. Morden might simply enjoy spreading chaos, causing millions of deaths, or even just one. Galen was trembling. He released Morden, took a step back.
"Not quickly. Not yet. You will answer one question for me first."
Morden straightened, wiped sweat from his forehead. He was squinting slightly, as if with a headache.
"You hardly need that gun to threaten me."
Galen found that Elizar was in a system near Thenothk, most likely in that same Omega sector. He refined his search.
"Here is my question. What is your purpose? Why do you serve the Shadows?"
Morden gave a half laugh, and a hint of his old smile flashed across his face.
"You want to get philosophical? I serve them because I choose to serve them. If you were smart, you'd do the same. Otherwise you're going to end up like the rest of the mages."
It was no answer at all. Morden folded his hands in front of him. Though he was clearly trying to regain his smooth, threatening manner, something seemed lacking – an intensity, a passion to his words.
"By the way, who was that in Down Below? Who's with you?"
"You left only two of us alive, and you can't remember which two?"
"Blaylock isn't known for his drunkenness. And there's at least one more, the one who came to Thenothk for you."
"Circe. She was killed. As for Blaylock, death changes one," Galen said.
"Doesn't it."
Morden's dark gaze met his.
"The Shadows have been manipulating you," Galen said.
And as he said it, he knew it was true.
"Manipulating me?"
Morden's eyes narrowed further, his forehead furrowing. He shook his head.
"You've got it backward. I've been the mastermind behind some of their greatest successes."
"The implant in your brain," Galen said, "that allows you to communicate with them. It stimulates the hypothalamus, influencing your emotions. You feel pleasure in serving them, as long as they provide the signal that orders the stimulation. They can also make you feel anger, or pain. Without their signal, the effect will fade."
And what would he find underneath? An equally evil Morden, ripe for the crushing? He hoped so.
"I don't know what you're talking about. No one's influencing me."
Galen found a match to the star field. Elizar was indeed in the Omega sector on the rim, in the Alpha Omega system. Though Galen could not be sure that the streaked brown planet he'd seen was the third from that star, he knew, as one knew things in a nightmare, that it was. For that planet was inhabited, and had received, from its residents, a special name: Z'ha'dum.
It made no sense that Elizar and Razeel would be there. That would not be the place to test his spell of destruction. In any event, he must not go there. He had sworn to control himself, to hold to his task. A hard shiver ran through him as he thought of crushing the Shadows, of destroying them and their home utterly, once and for all. If he went to Z'ha'dum, how could he stop himself from trying?
Yet Elizar and Razeel were there, awaiting him. And going to Z'ha'dum, now that he thought about it, seemed inevitable. He was good only for destruction; he was destined for darkness. Where else would his long road end, but at the heart of darkness?
He must simply maintain control, no matter how difficult, and complete his task. To do that, he required information from Morden, or he would be destroyed as he approached Z'ha'dum, just as G'Leel's comrades had been. At the thought of pulling the information from Morden, a new rush of energy bloomed through him. Morden rubbed his forehead.
"What exactly is your point?"
"I'm giving you the chance to be rid of the Shadow influence," Galen said, his voice cold.
"I need to know how to breach the defense net around Z'ha'dum and arrive there undetected. Tell me that, and I will destroy the implant within your brain and take you to safety. You need serve them no longer."
When Morden refused the offer, Galen would have his confirmation of Morden's true nature. Then he could torture the Shadows' agent for the information, and finally kill him.
Morden began to laugh, a hollow, broken sound. The reaction bothered Galen, though he did not know why.
"If you do not tell me willingly, then you will tell me unwillingly."
Morden continued to laugh. Galen bit out the words.
"Do you remember who you once were?"
He conjured a globe between them, revealed within it a quick series of images: the talk on the Anfran love stone, the explosion of the Io jump gate, Morden's screaming face, the calm of his later interview, Morden smiling as he approached Kosh's quarters to murder the Vorlon, Morden smiling as he paid off the man who had poisoned Londo's love, Adira, Morden smiling as he faced Galen in the mines deep underground.
Morden watched in silence.
Galen dissolved the sphere, and they regarded each other.
"I didn't realize they were influencing me," Morden said. "But it doesn't make any difference. I know who I was, and I know who I am. And you don't know the half of it."
"You have committed monstrous acts under their influence. They make you desire chaos and destruction. They make you revel in it. But that doesn't mean you must continue. You can stop. You can do good. All you need do is tell me what I ask."
Morden glanced down at the stone hanging from his neck, his expression unreadable.
"I made a deal with them – to manipulate, to tempt, to provoke, to kill. I promised to serve them willingly, with all the skills at my command."
Galen did not want to know, did not want to continue the conversation. Yet he found himself speaking.
"You believed your wife and daughter trapped in hyperspace at the moment of their deaths."
Morden's eyebrows rose in surprise.
"Yes. They agreed to free my family, to allow them to die."
"You know that..."
"I know it's unlikely. I know they probably died with the explosion. But I couldn't stand the possibility that they were suffering. I would have promised anything, if it had even the slightest chance of helping them."