That Nietzsche Thing (19 page)

The Tac Team fired. Everyone at once.
Constantine fired his centimeter gun. Cain took the bullets without
flinching. His suit jumped and shredded with the onslaught, but
Cain stood still, straightening his tie, until an errant round tore
it in two.

That finally got a reaction.

Cain twirled, as if about to start a dance,
and dissolved instantly into the whirlwind. The tornado grew in
size until it consumed Constantine’s TAC-30. It picked each man up
off his boots and cast his into the air, sending men raining down
like so much garbage blocks away.

Cain slowly reformed back in the center of
the street. Only Constantine, myself, Tebor and Vivian
remained.

Cain’s visage was once again handsome, as if
the ultraviolet lights had not touched him. Tebor and Vivian still
showed the extent of their wounds – Vivian fumbled, blind – but
Cain was whole once again. His suit, however, had seen better
days.

“Do you understand now, Detective?” he said
to me. “There is no real choice to make. The human race is doomed
to destruction. They will destroy themselves, or I will destroy
them. There is no third path.”

“No,” I shook my head. I didn’t believe it, I
wouldn’t believe it. But my options were rapidly dwindling. Cain
was hell-bent on clearing humanity from the face of the earth, and
repopulating it with his kind. The NeoCons wanted to use Cain as a
weapon to do exactly the same.

I only had once chance.

Vivian.

I only hoped she was still strong enough,
blind and stumbling as she was, her eyes burned out of her head. I
tried to reach out in my mind and find her in her apartment. If I
could take her hand, I could give her my strength.

“No,” I continued to shake my head, but now I
meant it in a very different way. “You’re right, Sire, there is no
choice.”

“Then stand with me, Detective,” Cain
commanded. “At this most auspicious moment. The first city of
mankind has fallen to my will. The rest will tumble like
dominoes.”

Cain pointed to a spot beside him on the
blacktop.

I wearily took a step.

“Fonseca,” Constantine said behind me. “Don’t
move.” I paid him no heed. “Fonseca!” he called out. I couldn’t see
it, but I knew his centimeter gun had swung around to me.

“No!” Cain cried out. Even his inhuman
reflexes weren’t fast enough to stop the shot. Something smashed
into my left shoulder, hard. It felt like brick hit me. It sent my
spinning. I came full around and crashed down onto the
concrete.

Cain moved like lightning. One second he was
in the center of the street, then next he was on top of
Constantine. Rage burned in his eyes. He crushed Constantine’s head
against the stone steps and bared his white fangs. He was lowering
in for a bite when a thunderclap echoed in the street.

Blind Vivian move with equally
incomprehensible speed. She vanished for her corner of the road and
materialized above Cain. She leapt on top of both men and wrapped
an arm around Cain’s neck.

But she didn’t attack or bite or fight him,
instead she leaned in close.

Back in her apartment, I could hear her
reciting the worlds along with me. We spoke together in soft tones,
low and reverent.

Vivian whispered, quick and haunting into
Cain’s ear. Pacified, Cain let go of Constantine and fell back onto
the steps. Constantine quickly scrambled to his feet, but Vivian
kept hugging Cain from behind, whispering into his ear.

I muttered the words myself, laying, bleeding
in the dirt. We spoke together as one: “
God looked upon the
earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his
way upon the earth
.” I coughed, spitting up blood. “
God said
unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is
filled with violence through them; and, behold, I will destroy them
with the earth...
”

The hexadecimal of 1768: 6C0. Dark had coded
Cain with a trigger, hidden in the text of the Bible. Genesis, of
course. Chapter 6, verse 12, word 0. The first word on the line for
a mathematician like Dark. God. The real Q. The true Source. That
was Cain’s trigger. That was his undoing.

I could feel my heart beating faster. The
bullet. Constantine.

But none of it mattered. I was free. I could
feel the Geneing washing over me. I was back in Vivian’s apartment.
She was there. Breakfast was almost ready. I could smell the coffee
on the stove.

Epilogue

Sasha finished his story.

“That’s it?” Vivian said, as Sasha got up to
pour himself another cup of coffee.

“That’s it,” he said.

“What about Cain? What about the Genies?”

“Cain remained, undisturbed on the Town Hall
steps until the sun rose. He fried, the wind dispersing his ashes.
Lost in his Geneing, he couldn’t regenerate. He was finally dead.
And with Cain dead, every Gene Genie on the plant woke up all at
once. Sober. Sporting the mother of all hangovers.” Sasha returned
to the table, sipping at his coffee.

“And you and your gunshot wound? And me
without eyes?”

Sasha shrugged. “Well, here we are.” He
smiled over the rim of his coffee.

Vivian laughed. “You are so full of
shit!”

“You asked,” Sasha said, defensively. “You
wanted the truth. Well, there you have it.”

“You know…” Vivian leaned forward on the
breakfast table. “…I could almost believe your story, right up to
the part where
you
read a whole book.”

Sasha laughed into his coffee. “Yeah, well,
miracles can happen.”

“And all of it?” Vivian pressed her
advantage. “Being dead, being a vampire...I don’t remember any of
it? Why?”

Sasha shrugged again.

Vivian shook her head and began to clear the
breakfast things.

“You are so full of shit,” she said again,
with no malice in her voice.

“Hey,” Sasha conceded. “Maybe we’re still
Geneing, and this is my Eden. Maybe the world is burning all around
us, and we’re dying of thirst in some squalid, rundown hovel.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Vivian sighed from the
kitchen, putting the plates into the sink.

“What? That the world is being destroyed by
vampires?”

“No, that you think this is paradise.”

Sasha snorted. Vivian returned to the table
and kissed him on the cheek.

“Well, this paradise comes with laundry,”
Vivian said, changing gears. “And it’s your turn.” She was heading
for the bedroom, already taking off her pajama bottoms.

“Ugh,” Sasha complained, putting down his
coffee cup and raising from the table.

“You should be grateful,” Vivian called out
from the bedroom, then quoted. “You know that Nietzsche thing?
About what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger?”

“Yeah?” Sasha called back.

“Well, good news,” she said, tossing her
pajama bottoms and bra out through the door and poking her head and
bare shoulders around the jam. “Laundry won’t kill you.”

Sasha smiled and scooped up Vivian’s
discarded clothes. He tossed them into the over-full laundry hamper
and hefted it into his arms.

No, it might not kill you, Sasha thought as
he pushed through the bead curtain and started toward the front
door. But experience had taught him there were far worse fates than
death.