Agents of the Demiurge (13 page)

She hesitated a moment, then looked him
directly in the eye. “By the time you receive my message, it will
be too late for my world. Create again.”

Simone got to her feet. “Good luck,
Erik.”

“That was blasphemy,” he whispered.

Her eyes narrowed. “You agreed to my
terms.”

“So I did.”

She left the room and Erik smiled. If he
managed to escape in time, he was going to look that woman up. And
Simone
would
answer his question.

Two events
accelerated their preparations.

The first event was a Church announcement
that not only would citizens be able to purchase fifteen minute
sessions to punish an Agent for whatever they cared to blame on the
Demiurge, but that there were in fact two captive Agents available
for punishment. Hess and Elza joined Jerome, San, and Drake in
front of a portable television set to study the footage.

The second Agent, a wiry white man, screamed
as he writhed in pain. The video reel consisted of many segments
spliced together like the trailer to a perverse movie. All five
Observers stared at the screen, frowning with near identical
expressions.

San gestured dramatically at the television.
“Pure propaganda piece.”

“No,” Elza said. “They showed a single, uncut
torture session to great effect when they unveiled Ingrid. This
doesn't let the audience see spontaneous healing.” She nodded with
business-like finality. “They don't have a second Observer. This is
a grand bluff.”

Jerome put a finger on the screen, drawing
their eyes to the face of one of the punishers. Subtle twitches
riddled his otherwise stony features and his gaze moved too
rapidly, morphing into a flinch whenever the body before him bucked
against its restraints. “They're terrified,” she said.

And they were. Once Hess turned his attention
from the victim to the perpetrators, their nerves became obvious.
He shuffled through his memory, trying to recall the bindings used
on this Observer. Ingrid had been hardly restrained compared to the
comprehensive job done to this one.

“Whoever it is has escaped before,” Hess
said, pointing to ankle strap, belt strap, arm strap, wrist strap,
and neck strap. “He has obviously been a tough case for them.”

His thoughts went to the six Observers still
unaccounted for in this world. Mariana didn't possess sufficient
ferocity to instill fear in a field mouse. Griff tended to defer to
authority of any form. As well as Mel fought with condescension and
witty words, he lacked whatever capacity made one a man of action.
Greg didn't do well with anything physical. That only left two
possibilities.

“Kerzon?”

For a moment, silence. Then a sigh from Elza.
“Kerzon can be a magnificent bully, but only one of us could turn
the psychological table like that.”

Jerome turned her skull-like face on him.
“Will you rescue
him
?”

“Can I bury him alive after he votes?”

“I would only dig him back up,” Jerome
said.

“You know,” Hess said, “I'm not a fan of your
morals.”

San snickered suddenly and violently, making
a sound like a stalling engine. “Sucks to be on the getting end of
it, don't it, Hess?”

“In case you forgot, I spent centuries on the
wrong end of moral outrage,” Hess snapped.

San met his words with a smirk. “It's almost
enough to make you question your fairy tale version of right and
wrong, isn't it?”

“Stop it,” Elza snapped.

“Did I find the line?”

“That's the line, San. Stop antagonizing Hess
or get out of my life.”

San folded her arms. “Fine. I'll take it easy
on your
man
. Honestly, how did the Creator decide which of
you two to make which sex?”

Elza's back straightened. Hess laid a hand on
her shoulder. “Don't,” he said. “I know you value San's friendship
– though I doubt even the Creator understands the reason why.”

His woman glanced back at him. “You're going
to risk getting caught
again
so you can save the person you
hate most. No one is allowed to ridicule you for your values.
Especially not a woman who has none.”

They shared a look for a moment before they
returned their attention to San, whose expression had gone empty.
She shrugged. “Sorry to set you off, Elza. I won't discuss ethics
again.”

Hess pinched the bridge of his nose. “We're
going to bring Erik out of there. Because that's the right thing to
do.”

They began planning in earnest after that.
Hess had been purchasing small arms and ammunition on the black
market for months. He had constructed compartments in the gas tank
and muffler of his car, stored several of the weapons, then aged
the fresh welds with liberal applications of salt water.

Retrieving those weapons would require a bit
of brute force, but until then his vehicle would pass any
inspection conceived by security forces. Hess had never encountered
a guard who was willing to disassemble the components of a luxury
car in the name of thoroughness. Vehicle inspections tended to
follow a remarkably standardized script, derived from universally
practical considerations.

Typically, the occupants were removed from
the vehicle for the duration of the search. While they were kept
under surveillance, someone would perform an undercarriage
inspection using a mirror on the end of a pole, looking for
conspicuous evidence such as mysterious containers bolted or taped
in place. Another person would investigate the contents of the cab.
Often a third individual would search the engine compartment and
the trunk. Given the right – or wrong – set of circumstances,
someone
might
go so far as to dump suitcases, slice open
upholstery, or take apart the air filter.

That cache of weapons was part of escape plan
A. His car would await them in a parking lot located in the section
of the Church headquarters closest to the new Interrogation Complex
while being outside of the high security zone. They would enter the
complex on all terrain vehicles with guns blazing in the immediate
aftermath of their nuke's explosion. After retrieving Ingrid and
Erik, they would intermix with people running to safety until they
reached the car. If they could not reach the car, then they would
leave Church property on foot and use motorcycles kept in a storage
rental unit to escape the city.

Hess had constructed a number of improvised
explosive devices using pipes, gun powder, buckshot, and circuitry
from remote controlled toy cars. He also had copious amounts of
chlorine gas made from reacting bleach and hydrochloric acid – the
production of which twice resulted in painful accidents, one of
which proved fatal to him while the other had him wheezing and
coughing blood for a time.

The annoying gas leaks happened at every step
of the process. When he mixed bleach and acid together in batches
inside a glass jug from a water cooler, poisonous vapor would leak
before he managed to fit his rigged valve into place to channel the
gas into the immense natural gas tank he had prepared for that
purpose. When he loaded the chlorine gas from the immense vessel
into refrigerant tanks pumped to be functional vacuums, more gas
slipped free to cause mischief. And any time he moved the
collection of tanks from one place to another, the jostling caused
the emission of painfully peppery scents.

Drake, due to boredom or a desire to be
helpful or some base need, synthesized a significant quantity of
methamphetamine. He tested a sample from each batch of his product,
further calling his motives into question. Fortunately, the same
space constraints that prevented Hess from making large batches of
chlorine gas also prevented Drake from destroying their garage
whenever his chemistry equipment eventually exploded. After that
incident, Elza threatened Drake with the wrench until he promised
to cease all chemistry.

Jerome and San contributed to the group's
activities by keeping them supplied with blood for transfusions and
performing most of the cooking. The meals provided by Jerome were
plain fare such as beans and rice while San created a mix of
eclectic masterpieces and inedible experiments. The other Observers
raved about her chocolate and tea chicken planks for days, only for
San to announce that not only would she never make it again, but
she intended to guard the secret of its recipe for the rest of her
life.

Throughout everything, Elza worked
tirelessly. She melted and recast uranium in molds; created
three-dimensional scaffolds of neutron moderators; constructed a
mechanism to explosively fire a sub-critical ring from each end of
the pipe to thread a sub-critical spike in the center, where a ring
of tungsten carbide and beryllium would encircle the combined
mass.

Per Elza's explanation of her construction,
the wedges of uranium would generate neutrons through radioactive
decay. The graphene matrix would bring the ejected neutrons down to
speeds where they were more likely to react with the nuclei of
other uranium atoms to continue a chain reaction. The ring of
neutron reflectors would reflect a portion of the escaping neutrons
back to ground zero to renew their efforts. And when the three
sub-critical masses met one another, the rate of chain reactions
would rapidly accelerate in fractions of a second until their
homemade doomsday weapon blossomed into a mushroom cloud laden with
radioactive fallout.

Meanwhile, Hess spent time training the
others. He covered handgun and rifle marksmanship, deploying tanks
of chlorine gas, setting off an IED, urban assault tactics, and gas
mask usage. He forced them through drills wearing the masks,
accustoming them to the extra effort required for each breath so
they wouldn't panic when breathing became hard during their
operation and rip off their mask to take a breath of poisonous
green gas.

They packed army rucksacks with pipe bombs,
bound tanks of chlorine gas to the ATV's with bungee straps, and
prepared speed loaders to fill clips with rounds of ammunition at
the last minute (because, as Hess stressed to the others, keeping
the springs of a clip under constant pressure by storing them
loaded was begging for a misfire).

Maps of the Church campus were long since
memorized. The idea of using their prodigious stores of
methamphetamine as part of their assault had long been ridiculed
out of consideration. All that remained was for Elza to complete
construction of their opening salvo, which would simultaneously
shock and awe the enemy and cut all electronic communications in
the region of operations.

Elza finished her work only five months after
she began. They celebrated the completion of their weapon of mass
destruction in the shop with an elaborate dinner and copious
amounts of a Zinfandel chosen by San which tasted like turpentine
on first encounter, but transformed into a beautiful, fiery taste
sensation under the numbing influence of alcohol. At a later point
in their evening of revelry, they christened their nuke, giving it
the name
Demiurge's Dick
after a spirited debate.

“Opposition's bout to get slapped with
Demiurge's Dick
,” Drake shouted, grabbing his crotch with
one hand and throwing the other into the air. He gyrated his hips
suggestively.

Jerome giggled until she fell off her seat,
for what was at least the fifth time that evening. Drake tried to
help her up but landed on the floor with her instead. San slouched
forward to pass out on the table. Elza pouted, upset that the name
she had put forth,
Triumph of Reason
, had not won.

She stage whispered to Hess “You'd think the
woman who built the damn thing would get to name it.”

When Hess attempted to play the part of the
knight errant by spray-painting Elza's chosen moniker on the
device's casing, he sprayed himself in the face with yellow paint
and declared himself jailed on the charge of painting under the
influence.

The next morning, Hess awoke to Elza's
frantic curses. He staggered to his feet and ran for the nearest
gun. Armed, Hess stumbled about, finger hovering beside the safety
as he squinted in every direction.

“Put the gun away,” Elza snapped. “We have an
emergency situation here.
Demiurge's Dick
is on the verge of
exploding prematurely.”

Hess lowered his pistol. “I thought you
didn't care for that name.”

“That was before it pissed me off.” Elza read
the dial of her Geiger counter again. “We can take it apart or we
can set it off. Either way, we need to get started right now.”

Hess looked to the gun in his hand. “Then our
plan is in motion. Tell the others they have five minutes to get
stone cold sober.”

“Hess, I don't want to see you do that.”

His finger slipped the safety. Hess nestled
the cold barrel into the tissue of his jaw. “It won't last.”

“Doesn't matter,” she said.

He pulled the trigger.

Once Hess woke up, life restored and hangover
free, he put a bullet through the brains of Jerome and Drake, who
hadn't followed his instructions to sober up by resurrection. Elza
flew around the garage, moving equipment so they could move the
mass of steel named
Demiurge’s Dick
into the SUV without
incident. As she passed him, she managed a glare. “All I ask is a
little discretion when you do that. I don't want to see you
die.”

“You just want me to cease existing,” he
said.

Elza spun away. “We agreed not to speak about
this.”

“I just find it a little inconsistent that
you don't want to see me take a nap for five minutes when you voted
to erase us from existence.” Hess rapped his knuckles on a work
bench. “We lived lifetimes together, Elza. Thousands of lifetimes.
The entire time I thought the two of us were happy. I looked
forward to eternity together.”