Kill Switch (65 page)

04:18

“You're wearing your hat this time,” said Prospero Bell, pointing at my skullcap. “You're safe from the monsters.”

Prospero took a step toward me, but the chain brought him up short.

“Get back, boy,” snarled Santoro. “This man is dangerous.”

“Prospero,” I said quickly, “I know you want to go home.”

“They won't let me,” said the prisoner.

I took a chance. “
I
will. Do you know what they're going to do with your God Machine? They're using it to control Kill Switch devices in ten cities. They have hundreds of drones in the air, each one rigged to blow when the power goes out. Each of those drones is carrying weaponized smallpox. Do you know that? Did they tell you that's what they were doing with your machine?”

“Don't listen to him,” snapped Santoro. “He's just trying to confuse you.”

“No,” I said, “Harcourt Bolton has replicated dozens of the Kill Switch devices. They're in the ten biggest cities in America. He's going to kill millions of people, Prospero. Most of them are children, like you were when your father stole the God Machine from you.…”

But the prisoner shook his head. “Children like me? No … there are no children like me. And what do I care? They said that once the sequence is finalized they'll let me go home. I want to go home. That's all I ever wanted to do.”

“Prospero, listen to me,” I said, feeling each tick of the clock like a crack of thunder, “they're never going to let you go home.”

“He's lying,” warned Santoro.

“The machines will kill millions of people, Prospero. Millions.”

Prospero shrugged. “They're not my people.”

“Yes, they are,” I said. “Some of them are.”

The boy stared at me. “What?”

“He's lying,” said Santoro. “You know you're unique. That's why we love you. That's why we keep you safe, yes?”

04:16

“Prospero … I
know
someone who's like you,” I said. “Her name is Junie Flynn. She was born in the same place as you. They called it a hive. She looks just like you. She could be your sister. Or maybe she
is
your sister.”

Prospero's eyes went wide. “Sister…? Yes … I dreamed I had a sister.…”

“He's trying to confuse you,” said Santoro. He began shifting toward my blind side. I saw it and compensated, but I kept between Santoro and Prospero.

“I'm telling you the truth, kid,” I said. “She
does
look like you. And she knows about you. She wants to meet you. She wants to share her secrets with you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Junie knows she's not from here, either,” I said. “She knows she doesn't belong here. She knows she's from another place.”

“He's making it up,” snapped Santoro, but Prospero was listening to me. Very closely.

I fished inside my head for something, some way to prove it. And those strange words floated to the surface of my need. In as clear a voice as I could, I looked at Prospero and said,
“Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn.”

I have no idea what it means, or if it really means anything. Lovecraft wrote it into one of his stories, and I heard it in my head. I had to take a chance.

Prospero Bell closed his eyes. “Please,” he whispered. “I just want to go home.”

“Then
help
me,” I begged, “and I'll help you. How do I stop it? Help me save your sister and I will help you go home. I swear it by everything I love. Give me the reset code.”

Tears glittered in the corner of those burned eyes, and Prospero said, “The reset sequence is—”

“No!” cried Santoro, and he attacked. He hooked a toe under one of the lengths of pipe, flipped it up, caught it, and swung it at my head with shocking speed and power. I ducked fast, but the pipe still caught me a glancing blow. I staggered, bells exploding in my head. I ran sideways, fighting for balance, trying to clear my eyes, and saw him come at me again. I jumped forward this time, crashing into him and slamming his shoulders hard against the side of the machine.

It was the wrong thing to do. The impact hit something and suddenly all of the lights flashed at once and there was a heavy, bass
whoooom.
The lights ringing the gateway flared so bright it stabbed my eyes. I shoved Santoro away and tried to run, but it wasn't something that could
be
outrun. It was like trying to outrun the sound of a scream. It was like trying to outrun a tsunami. It rose above me and wrapped around me and smashed down on me and it took me. It was at once totally alien and yet disturbingly familiar.

I'd felt this before. Down, down, down in the cold bottom of the world. When the machine Erskine had built in the ancient city had pulsed and then exhaled its foul breath all over Top, Bunny, and me. The breath of something evil and hungry and strange. Then it had only been a puff of that air. Now it was a roar.

Now it was a scream that burst from the mouth of the gate and slammed into me, lifting me physically off the ground, hurling me across the room like I was nothing. Spitting me out like a piece of gristle. The wall was there. It seemed to reach for me. To want to hurt me.

And it did.

I spun, curled, tried to position myself to take the impact in a way that wouldn't ruin me. I hit. God, I hit. Shoulder. Head. Hip. The pain was like falling into boiling water. It was everywhere. Inside and out. I collapsed onto the metal floor as the God Wave washed over me and filled the room.

And filled me.

The lights in the room stayed on. The lights inside my head went out. The last thing I saw was the digital display on the inside of my goggles.

03:59

 

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-TWO

THE BEACHVIEW APARTMENTS

ENCINITAS, CALIFORNIA

SEPTEMBER 10, 2:47
P.M.

Lydia left Bunny on the patio while she went in to take a shower. She was quick about it, though, and pulled her robe on over wet, bare skin. Her attempts to entice him into the shower with her had been answered by a single, slow shake of the head. No words.

As soon as she stepped into the living room, though, she knew something was wrong. Badly wrong. The couch cushions were missing and the gun safe hidden beneath them had been opened. Boxes of ammunition, spare magazines, cleaning kits, rags, and three handguns lay scattered across the floor. A six-shot nickel-plated Smith & Wesson Special lay in a growing pool of gun oil that ran from a plastic bottle that had been stepped on. Oily footprints led in a wandering trail out to the patio, but when she ran to the French doors, the patio was empty. One of the guns was missing. A Glock 26. The trigger lock had been removed and lay where it had fallen. There was no time to count the magazines to see if one was missing, but a box of .9mm shells had been torn open and bullets littered the floor.

“¡Ay, Dios!”

Lydia ran to the slat-wood rail and looked wildly up and down the beach. The bocce players were still involved in their game and the sound of their laughter floated to her on the breeze. Somehow the normalcy of that sound and the accompanying ordinary happiness twisted the day into an even worse shape. The oily footprints ended at the patio rail and she leaned out to see deep prints punched into the sand. They started toward the water, then turned sharply and vanished around the far side of the apartment complex. Lydia vaulted the rail, not caring that she was unarmed and wore only a damp bathrobe. What did that matter? She landed running, pivoted in the sand, and tore along the side of the building. Even then, even as panic turned her heart to ice and exploded red poppies before her eyes, she did not lose herself. She didn't scream Bunny's name. She knew that it could have the exact opposite effect. Her screams would be filled with fear and all that they would become was a starter pistol for whatever Bunny was going to do.

At the corner of the building she skidded into a turn and then froze.

Bunny was there, kneeling on the sand between two decorative bottle palms. The barrel of the Glock pushed up hard into the soft underside of his chin. He did not look at her. His eyes were glazed, empty, like glass. There wasn't even an expression of pain on his face. There was absolutely nothing.

Lydia was very still. “Bunny,” she said in as calm a voice as she could force past the stricture in her throat. “Listen to me. I need you to put the gun down.”

She repeated it several times, making it a statement of calm command. Not asking questions, not asking if he could hear her. Bunny was too close to the edge to allow him a choice. She needed him to obey. That was all. It was the only thing tethering either of them to the world.

“Put the gun down, Bunny,” she said as she very carefully edged closer. Her heart wanted to add a plea, to beg, to call on his love for her, but she knew better. This was a tightrope stretched across the abyss and it needed only a single breath to make him fall. His face was as red as flame, his hand glistened with sweat, and his huge muscles were rigid with some kind of awful internal conflict. Each separate muscle stood out in sharp relief as if he had committed himself to a total struggle against some opponent of monstrous strength. His blond hair hung in sodden spikes over his brow; beads of moisture covered his face like rainwater. Bunny's body shuddered with the strain. And yet there was still no trace of expression on his face.

“Master Sergeant Rabbit,” she said, putting steel in her voice, “you will lower your weapon right now.”

That did it. Somehow, that reached him. The pressure of the barrel eased, the hand holding it seemed to fall as if the weight of intent was too much for even those muscles to bear. The Glock came down, down, down …

And then Lydia moved.

She stepped in, clamped one hand over the gun, wrapping her fingers tight to provide resistance to the slide in case he fired, aware that it probably wouldn't work. But at the same moment she used her other hand to strike the nerves on the top of his wrist. Lydia was very strong and she knew how and where to hit. She was certain that never in her life, not in all her years of combat, had she moved faster or hit with greater force and precision. She leg-checked his arm, using body weight to jerk his arm straight, to weaken the elbow in a moment of hyperextension; then she pivoted and took the gun from him. She put everything she had into the movement because she knew how strong this man was, and how quick.

With the gun in her hand she pirouetted and danced backward, releasing the magazine, racking the slide to eject the round in the chamber, doing everything right because there was so much to lose if she did anything wrong.

Except that Bunny never moved.

Never resisted.

Did not try to hold on to the weapon.

He knelt there, staring at nothing. Saying nothing.

Being
nothing.

And then he fell face-forward onto the sand without even trying to break his fall.

 

CHAPTER ONE HUNDRED TWENTY-THREE

NOWHERE

I woke to the sound of weeping.

At first I was afraid it was my own sobs I heard, that I was broken. But as I struggled to come fully awake it was clear that the sobs were not inside my head or in my chest. They were close, though. And male.

I forced my eyes open. The lab was gone. The walls were gone. Maybe I was gone. My brain was too battered to tell. The guy kept weeping. After a minute or maybe an hour, I rolled over onto my hands and knees, coughed, spat, blinked my eyes clear. Looked around.

He was there. A dozen feet away, huddled into a quivering ball against a stone wall. Long, jagged cracks ran from ceiling to floor and a few zigzagged out across the ground. The place was ruined, dying. Big chunks of masonry were heaped around, dust drifting like pale ghosts from the impact points. The computers at the far end of the lab were smoking and as I watched, a few small tongues of fire began to lick at the metal housing. The stink of burning plastic and rubber filled the air. Other smells, too. Cloth. And … flesh. That was one of the odors I wish was not stored in my personal inventory, but it was. And I knew it well enough to recognize it now. Someone was burning. People smell different than animals when they burn.

This was a person. Or maybe more than one. I sat back on my heels and tried to make sense of what happened. The lab was wrecked as if it had been struck by something worse than the God Wave. Maybe an earthquake? The lights around the inner rings of the gate were still glowing with hellish light. Steam curled out of the mouth of the tunnel and roiled against the rough stone of the ceiling. Several of the fluorescent lights had torn loose from their bolts and hung precariously by wires.

I turned to the man who lay against the wall. He wasn't wearing a lab coat and he wasn't dressed like a Closer. For a crazy moment I thought it was Toys. It looked like him, though that was impossible. Toys was in San Diego. A thousand miles from here.

But … he wore the same clothes Toys had worn when he stayed at my house. Same shirt and pants. Same sandals. Same wristwatch. My brain seemed to slip out of gear. How could Toys be here? How?

I crawled to him. He was facing away from me, arms wrapped around his head. I could see pale scars crisscrossed on his hands and wrists. Toys had those same scars. He'd gotten them when he'd thrown himself across Circe O'Tree at the hospital when Nicodemus and his Kingsmen stormed the hospital to try and kill Church's pregnant daughter. Toys and Junie had shielded her with their bodies and both would carry those scars forever.

I said, “Toys—?”

The sobs instantly stopped at the sound of my voice. Or, maybe, at the sound of his name.

Then the weeping man rolled over, his body whipcord taut, and past the shelter of his protective wrists he stared at me with familiar eyes.