Necropolis (24 page)

“I’ll take care of him, Mom, I promise.”

Tears shone in his mother’s eyes. “That’s my son.” Then she clutched him so tight that he finally had to tell her she was kind of hurting him.

She’d tried to warn him. It was going to hurt, she’d said. That was like telling someone about to go over Niagara Falls that they were going to get wet.

The pain began in a million different ways. Some were expected, some subtle, but most were bright and shocking in their attacks on his peace of mind.

Sundays after dinner, his parents used to dance in the living room to Tony Bennett. They’d twirl and sway, wistful smiles on their pusses. Brian rolled his eyes at these displays, but deep down, he adored them. He loved that they held hands at the movies, he loved the way she’d put her feet in his lap while they read on the couch, or the kisses they stole from each other in the hall when they thought he wasn’t around. It made him feel safe and warm.

They didn’t do those things anymore. They still said “I love you,” but it was mechanical now, as though the magic that energized their bond had been replaced by rote ritual. Mom now seemed skittish about touching his father.

Bright pain.

Recently he came across his father crying in the bathroom. Robert was at the sink, a razor in his hand. The tears slewed through down the shaving cream, creating runnels of clean cheek. Brian froze, his need to pee forgotten. Dad looked at him with red-rimmed eyes.

“Guess my mornings just got quicker,” he said, toweling the foam from his face and swiping the razor into the trash.
 

Only a week before, Dad had notice peach fuzz on Brian’s upper lip, and with much fanfare taught him the manly art of shaving. Something he himself would never do again.

Bright, bright pain.

Brian was astonished to discover how much he depended on the way people in his life
looked
. He knew you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But the strong cheekbones and rugged jaw he’d traced his fingers across so many times had been replaced by baby chub. His dad’s muscles had thinned. He was now officially scrawny, a beanpole. It wouldn’t be too long, they warned him, before his voice would change.
 

Brian violently reacted to that. That baritone voice was the author of a million secure “goodnights” as he drifted to sleep, a million reassurances when he skinned his knees or ran afoul of a bully, a million stern but loving rebukes when he made a selfish choice. He didn’t
want
that voice to change. Oh,
God
, he didn’t want anything else to change!

Blinding, tearing pain.

His father was finally laid off by the firm and went on reborn assistance. It wasn’t his fault, they said guiltily. We just can’t have a teenager as a partner. You understand. Robert understood. He and Marie had saved as much as they could for this day, and she was now working at the Saks perfume counter, but their lifestyle was rapidly devolving. There were arguments about money, about Brian, about everything. “I’m still the same inside!” he heard his Dad exclaim in a strangled voice. And a portentous silence afterwards.
 

Brian stayed mostly in his room, and his parents seemed content to let him. They were always exhausted now. They’d started to function in quiet, individual units, going about their business and avoiding each other as much as possible.

Two months ago he came home to his mother pulling clothes from shopping bags. Excitement rattled through him. He ran to the table in near-delirium, grabbing a yellow button-down shirt, still in its cellophane, and a gorgeous pair of burgundy chinos.

“Wow!” he said, already thinking about how he could match these new treasures to the outfits he already had.

His mother looked at him with sunken eyes. “These are for your father,” she whispered. “His clothes don’t fit anymore.”

Too much pain. Too much.

Brian ran to his parent’s room and went a little crazy then. He couldn’t remember exactly what he’d been doing, but whatever it was, his mother caught him in her arms and tried to restrain him. Brian pulled away and slapped her, an act so startling that she fell back onto the bed and burst into tears.

Now, a week later, somewhere dimly he knew he should feel remorse, but he didn’t. All that was there in his chest was a leaden sort of… loathing. For both of them.
 

He hated them. Perversely enough, the hate felt good. It was
his
. The rational part of his mind balked. It wasn’t Dad’s fault. He hadn’t done this on purpose. He and Mom had done everything possible to turn this tragedy into something they could survive. But they wouldn’t survive it nevertheless, and Brian found himself dreading the horrors each new day would bring. He couldn’t look at his father anymore without bile filling his mouth, couldn’t gaze at that kid’s face and white hair without wanting to beat his head against the floor until it broke, just like Liz Franklin.

The furies shook him daily now, a physical thing, and he held himself in his room until they abated. They swarmed him like flies, blotting out his air, getting into his mouth, buzzing his ears. Was this insanity? He didn’t know. But the pain was constant and shattering in its intensity.
 

Everything else disappeared in its glare, like sun reflecting off a snow bank.

27

SATELLITE INTERCEPT

TRANS00\INTERCEPT\GEOSAT231\121554\PRIORITY05-32\CLASS5EYESONLY

WEBSQUIRT INTERCEPT AS FOLLOWS:

(NAMES AND OTHER IDENTIFYING INFORMATION HAVE BEEN DELETED PER NSA REG 1037459324)

1: Nicole.

2: (pause) You. How’d you get access to this line?
 

1: I still have a few tricks up my sleeve.

2: Did you get the mask I sent you? The dealer assured me it was authentic first century.

1: Nicole.
 

2: Look, I’m in the middle of something.

1: Was that a scream?

2: Of course not.

1: What are you up to, Nicole?

2: You have full access to my database. An assistant translates our reports into Aramaic. But if you don’t think I’m being accommodating enough, you’re welcome to come in person and see for yourself.

1: You mock me?

2: (pause) No.

1: Your brother is concerned about you. He says you’re avoiding him. Secretive.

2: All our goals are the same.

1: (a chuckle) Please. Your goals have always been your own. But I assume survival is still one of them.

2: Oh, is that a threat, Daddy? Hello?

END END END TRANS00\INTERCEPT\GEOSAT231\DATE END END END

28

NICOLE

N
icole liked to work out her strategies with chess.

She closed her book and rose from the divan. She crossed to the table where the board sat. Its squares were sheesham and ebonized boxwood.
 

Right now, there was a game in progress. A very important game.
 

Her set was antique—well, it was more than an antique—it was ancient. An original 12th century collection of Lewis chessmen, given to her by her father. He’d discovered them in Scotland. She smiled inwardly. If the British Museum knew another complete set existed, they’d have a stroke.

She loved the medieval human figures, such a far cry from the abstracted Stanton pieces most of the world now used. No, these were
real
chessmen—the queen, cradling her face in dismay. The mounted knights with their swords and Templar shields. The bishops clutching their miters and bibles. The rugged castle tower. She wondered whether her father liked them because of their bulging eyes and sad faces—so much like his own.

She enjoyed studying the game’s history as well. Its lineage began in 6th century India, before expanding into Persia, China and Japan. When the Moorish conquest of Spain brought a Babylonian version to Europe, medieval Church fathers were scandalized. They quickly converted the pagan icons into proper Catholic figures. Except the serfs, of course. Who gave a shit about cannon fodder?
 

Most of all, though, she loved the Queen. Before the board’s “conversion,” there’d been no female figures. How strange that a church so violently patriarchal would replace the King’s vizier, originally the weakest member on the board, with a woman—let alone transform her into a superpower. Maybe it was due to the rising importance of the Virgin Mary in church doctrine. But Nicole suspected that, on a deeper level, humanity was finally beginning to sense where the real strength lay between the sexes.

The King was a figurehead, trapped by the burdens of office. He could only move slowly, carefully, one square at a time. The Queen had no such impediments. She could act without regard to opinion, rules of conduct or even the rule of law. She was the real mover and shaker, putting the right words into the King’s mouth, kissing his cheek, and acting deferential.
 

That’s how Nicole preferred to operate, in the shadow of the crown. Let her brother play alpha male. Let her deluded father try to control her from afar. Her plans had already been set into motion, in the dark. Her dear, dear family would realize this far too late.

She sat down at the board, examining the positions. She sighed. She’d been forced to sacrifice a pawn without any improvement in her position. Poor Donner.

She felt a quiet rustle inside. She could see why Elise had married him. His unpretentious manner and off-kilter good looks made him infinitely more tantalizing than her regular boy toys. And she’d appreciated how he’d kept her on her toes. He hadn’t been lulled by either her beauty or her bullshit. She’d relished the challenge of sparring with someone on her own level. She’d have liked him in her bed.

There’d been something else. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it. Maybe it was the weird combination of jaded street smarts and boy scout morality. She didn’t know. But it had been the first time in a long while she’d been unhappy about dispatching someone. But, after all, queens didn’t mate with pawns. And had Donner figured out what she was really up to—Jesus, it would have been a disaster.

She toyed with the queen figure and wondered how she’d feel once she’d achieved her goals. In the past, her victories had brought brief elation followed by an annoying ennui that required some new challenge to suppress. Like Hannibal, like Alexander, she was only interested in the act of conquest, not governing the conquered. “When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain,” she breathed quietly, “he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer.”

What challenges could possibly come after this?

And there was another sadness. She had rooks, bishops, knights, serfs… but no king. No one to share the glory with. She was alone, isolated by her unique nature.

She thought again of her father and all the advantages he’d bequeathed her. All but one. And for that one thing denied, she hated him to the core of her being. But she would soon seize what he withheld. And then she would greatly enjoy watching him die by her own hand.
 

When she was sixteen, she’d looked at her classmates and noticed how different their thoughts were from her own. She’d even wondered whether perhaps she was broken, even insane. Luckily, she’d realized that to be unburdened by empathy was an incredible advantage. It made her thinking clear, her strategies sound. It protected her from entanglements.

She looked across the board again. Besides the queen, the other players—the knights, bishops, even the kings—when you got down to it, they all were pawns.

29

DONNER / ARMITAGE

I
awoke in a basement to the sound of chanting.

Wiring and conduits threaded through the beams overhead. The stone walls glistened with sweat, the mortar a mildew green. Crates were stacked in piles everywhere on the cement floor. A rust-eaten staircase ascended to whatever lay above.
 

The chanting came from there. Upstairs. I couldn’t make out the words.

I tried singing along, making up nonsense words, and it made me laugh, and that made me cry a little. My throat was an ash can.
 

I shifted in my wheelchair. Pain, pulling. An IV in my arm. I traced it back to a bag of saline hanging from a pole on the back of the chair.
 

What was this place?
 

Suddenly I was breathless. I closed my eyes, trying to stay calm. Finally I evened out my rasping. My heart fluttered in its cage.

Something was wrong. I was weak. I looked down and lost my breath again. My legs were twigs, swimming in old flannel pajamas. I was a stick figure, desiccated, withered—
 

Somehow I’d become a scarecrow.

I ran fingers over my face. My cheekbones jutted like broken shelves of rock. Dear God, what had happened to me?

More chanting.

“Hey!” I screamed, my voice cracking. “Can’t a guy get a little quiet?”

In response, footfalls thumped heavily. A metal supply cabinet in the deepest shadows of the room swung forward on unseen hinges. A hidden entrance. How dramatic. A mannish form stepped half into the light, rendered in cartoon shades of black and white. He saw me, scowled, and vanished again.