“We’re here.”
“Where?”
“Above the Inner Sanctum.”
“The Inner Whatchum?”
“The place where they keep the Fractured Emerald.”
“Ahhhhhh,” said Franco. He thought about it and scratched his chin. “Ahhhhhh,” he said, again.
“Now it’s down to you.”
“Me?”
“I need you to blow a hole in the floor.”
“Won’t people, like, hear?”
Keenan shrugged. “According to JuJu the majority of guards lie on the way to the Fractured Emerald; the Inner Sanctum is a Holy Place, revered and sacred, not a place for guns and RPGs. Can you do it?”
“Hey!” said Franco, throwing his arms wide, “When it comes to bombs, I can do anything!”
“How long?” Keenan checked their back-trail.
“With calculations, PAD scans... give me fifteen minutes, if you want a proper job.”
“Yeah Franco, a proper job.”
But Franco wasn’t listening; he’d removed his Combat Head and had replaced it with his
Demolition Head
. He was already scratching his bearded chin and muttering under his breath. His eyes held a distant look. Keenan retreated, left Franco to it.
Keenan slumped in the corridor next to Pippa, accepting a canteen of water from her. He drank deep, handed it back, and stared at the wall. He closed his eyes, rubbed at pounding temples. Exhaustion taunted him.
“You OK?”
“Yes,” he said, voice quiet.
“Tension getting to you?”
“No.” Keenan glanced at Pippa. Franco had been right. Without her WarSuit—her armour
—
she was indeed voluptuous. He swallowed, hard, and breathed deeply through his mouth. No, he thought, no time. Not now. Mission: mission, to find the killer of my family. Must focus...
Pippa drank her water, then rested her head on his shoulder. She felt him tense, then relax. Something went
click
inside her head and she wondered just what the hell she was doing.
Why push him away? Because he fucked you over. Betrayed you. Left you. Yeah, but then, didn’t he have the right? You always knew it was a temporary measure... always knew he worshipped his little girls and put giving them a good home, a good upbringing before anything else. How could you ever compete with that? You couldn’t. Face reality, a reality you knew and understood, deep down inside when you started this thing. Indignation
.
When I
fucking started it? Yeah, when you
started it. When you ran half-naked across that beach on Molkrush Fed. What did you expect? You expect him not to fall in love with you?
But I never wanted a lover... never wanted a man... I hate men, have always hated them, and I always fucking will.
And she could see them, in her hands: the scissors. Scissors, spotted just a little with droplets of blood.
“Son of a bitch!” Pippa sat bolt upright, shivering. And realised, suddenly, she had fallen for Keenan; again. For a few minutes only... but it had been enough. Vitality rushed her veins like narcotics. She looked at him; saw him staring at her with a strange expression.
“Bad dream?”
“No.”
“You said... something.”
“What?”
“You spoke, in your sleep, about scissors. Then you jumped; you woke.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You can talk to me; if you like?”
“Maybe once, Keenan, not now.”
“Am I so different?”
Their eyes connected for a long moment, a moment that stretched into perhaps a minute, which was infinite. She shook her head. “No Keenan, you haven’t changed. You’re still the man I...”
She chewed her lip. Her grey eyes sparkled; changed from the emotionless gaze of a killer, melted, mellowed, showed a little of the girl deep inside.
Keenan put a finger to her lips. “Shh.”
She shook him away. “No, I’ll say it. You’re still the man I loved: the man I fell in love with, the only man I ever wanted, physically, emotionally: my lodestone, my rock, my anchor. But it can never be like that again; and I see it in you, in the way you look at me, the way you watch me, feel it in the way you touch me. But no, Keenan, no, it can’t happen. It must nothappen again.”
“I betrayed you,” he said. “But things are different now.”
“Yeah, damn fucking right,” she snapped, immediately contrite. “Sorry. Sorry. See? Let me try to explain: it’s not you that’s stopping me falling into your arms, welcoming you back into my heart, into my head, into my bed. It’s not you that’s the damn problem. It’s me.”
“Why?”
“Because of what I’ve become, because of the things I’ve done. You haven’t changed, Keenan, but I have
.
When we were together it was a wonderful thing; a time of happiness. I was locked deep in a shell, and you gradually coaxed me out into the sunshine. But, then you smashed the shell, and with nowhere left to hide I became the worst and most brutal of all creatures, the harshest of all predators. I think I lost the woman inside; I think hatred won. I became less than human. And I did things, Keenan, I did so many terrible things... things you would not believe.”
“I’m hardly an angel.”
“Let’s just say,” whispered Pippa, breaking their visual umbilical and placing her head back on his shoulder, “that before I can forgive you, I have to learn to forgive myself. And I don’t think I can do that.”
Keenan lifted his hand, tentatively and stroked her oil and grime-smeared hair. Still it felt beautiful under his touch; he closed his eyes and he had his Pippa back, for just a second of perfect total reality; he had her back and she was his.
“What unforgivable crimes?” he whispered.
“I killed...”
“Done it, guys!” boomed Franco, sticking his head in the tunnel. “It was hard, I have to admit it... no, it was damned near impossible, but as usual the wonderful and talented Franco worked out depth and elements, process and conversion; I realised the alloy was an extract—or amalgamation to be more precise—of Tiberium IV-2 and the PAD measured to within a few microns of eighteen inches. Using a relay connected to a funnel device and coupled with acid strips, I narrowed and concentrated the potential blast to...” He stopped, staring at them. “What?” he said. He held out his hands. “
What?
”
“We were having a private moment,” said Pippa. Her eyes were full of tears. She had felt it, in herself. She had... nearly told him everything: her father... and, deep down within... the scissors... what they represented. She took a deep breath, and banished the images. They could wait... for an eternity.
“Well, of all the damned cheek, you bloody well ask for my competence and skilled—no,
expert—
cooperation and I work like a grease monkey to get the job done; and here you two sit canoodling in the tunnel while I’m left to do all the graft.”
“Franco, get the fuck out.”
Franco looked into Keenan’s eyes and saw a terrible but controlled fury there. He chewed his lip.
“OK, boss.”
Franco disappeared.
Keenan turned back to Pippa.
He opened his mouth—
“Hey boss?”
“What is it,Franco?” snarled Keenan.
“Just thought I’d mention it: it’s nothing really, an inconsequence, but I’ve set the charge sequence; in just—” he checked his watch, “forty seconds, if you decide not to move your precious arse, then we’ll all be blown to whichever particular hell you don’t believe in.”
They waited at the end of the tunnel, Franco focusing on his watch. His sandal slapped the metal impatiently. There was a
crack
, and smoke stinking of metal and hot oil pumped down the corridor. They all coughed, and Franco crawled back to the point of detonation to find a jagged melted hole, two feet in diameter. He waved his hand, waved away the smoke, and peered down into what appeared to be solid blackness.
“You sure this is the right spot, Keenan?”
“Yes.” Keenan also peered into the gloom, then unpacked his Line and drilled into the metal of the floor. He tapped the edges of the hole, waiting for them to cool; then glanced at Pippa. “You OK?”
“Yes.”
“Right guys, we’ll drop slow, with MPKs charged. I don’t know what’s down there, if there really are guards or if JuJu was sucking my dick. What I do know is that the Fractured Emerald is directly beneath us. So... any questions?”
“If there are hostiles?” said Franco.
“Shoot to kill. No games. This is the mission climax; I don’t want any fuck-ups.”
Keenan descended into the black of the Inner Sanctum. It was terribly cold after the corridors of metal, and a breeze eddied, giving the impression of a vast underground space. There was a green glow in the distance.
The Fractured Emerald!
Keenan felt his pulse quicken, but was overcome by a sudden flood of doubt. Would he be able to use it? To interact? Would it look into his past? Would it give him the name he required? For death. For vengeance. For justice.
Combat K dropped lower and lower in the chasm.
The darkness swallowed them.
They hung, suspended. Everything was perfectly quiet, perfectly still. The darkness was a shroud. Keenan swung, MPK moving uneasily. Pippa, eyes trained on her PAD, shook her head.
“There’s nothing here: no activity, no life-signs. According to the PAD, this is a vast natural chamber a kilometre deep and three kilometres square.”
“What’s the light? The green glow?”
“The PAD can’t get a lock.”
“You ever known a PAD to fail?”
“It’s rare,” conceded Pippa.
Again they dropped in formation, Lines hissing softly between gloved fingers. As Keenan’s boots touched down he folded into a crouch. Pippa and Franco joined him. They unclipped their individual Lines and waited for the tiny machines to self-reclaim.
“It’s too obvious,” said Franco, staring at the distant green glow. “It’s a come-on.”
“Yeah, I know,” whispered Keenan, “but we haven’t got any other options. Have we? I’ll lead; you two stay a hundred metres behind. Cover my back, OK?”
“Keenan, the PAD’s picking something up.”
“What is it?”
“It’s analysing. It’s... oh, it’s the floor of the chamber. It’s made from... it seems to be made from human bone.”
“Human bone?”
“Yeah, it’s quite specific.”
Keenan removed his glove and ran his hand across the polished smooth surface. It was indeed bone, slick with the passing of millennia. He shook his head. Unease clasped his spine and shook him. “That’s way too fucking creepy.”
“I say we get out of here,” said Franco.
“What, and not claim our prize?” Keenan’s eyes gleamed. “We’ve come this far. Wait here if you want, I’m going on.”
“I’m with you,” said Franco, voice soft, fear a glint in his eyes. He shook his head in annoyance.
This place,
he thought.
This unholy place! It’s getting to me, eating my balls. God, I wish I had my pills, the pink ones used to make me feel so mellow...
and he realised with a sudden rush that, bizarrely, sometimes, he actually missed Mount Pleasant. Yes, Betezh had been a bastard, and yes, sometimes his testicles underwent the odd electrocution. But, in his little cell with his little shelf and his few possessions, life had been so uncomplicated. It was like being a child again: controlled, without fear, somebody else doing the thinking.
Keenan walked across the bone floor towards the glow. His senses started to scream at him; not just the concept that this whole thing, this mission, this theft, was a set-up, a trap, but also the possibility that maybe the Fractured Emerald didn’t do what it said on the tin. His MPK traced arcs through the darkness. His boots trod softly and his eyes were narrowed, scanning, looking for trouble.
The glow started to enlarge, went from distant firefly to ethereal globe. As Keenan’s eyes adjusted to the Inner Sanctum, he realised there was a black column, intricately carved, certainly archaic, and—according to the PAD—also made of bone. There was a niche in the column and there, on a small square of black velvet, sat the most fabulous gem Keenan had ever seen. It emitted the green glow. It almost pulsed with a rhythm of its own. It was flawless and beautiful, and drew the eye of the watcher, sucked at any who glanced into its deep and fathomless depths. Its purity was unquestionable. Its power was real, like smoke in the air, insubstantial, drifting, but with an awesome, random energy that oozed an ability to kill.
Keenan stopped and stared hard at the Fractured Emerald.
“It’s beautiful,” said Pippa, voice honey.
“It must be worth a fortune!” boomed Franco boorishly. “Just think of... think of the whores!”
Keenan stared, entranced, but at the same time wary. Something prickled his scalp. He shivered. He glanced left, then right, and blinked, seeing for the first time the black throne carved of black bone. A woman sat on the throne, petite and delicate, almost painfully thin, her skin a deep and vibrant ebony, her beauty in her slim nakedness stunning. Her skin was oiled, and her black hair tumbled and fell in deep rich ringlets. The glow of the Fractured Emerald shone reflected in her narrowed green eyes, and the surreal witch-light made her veins stand out green against her black skin.